I'm still salty that I can't use em-dashes anymore for fear of my writing being flagged as AI generated. Been using them for years—it's just `alt+shift+-` on a Mac keyboard and I find them more legible in many fonts compared to the simple dash on the typical numpad.
It's so sad to me that good typographical conventions have been co-opted by the zeitgeist of LLMs.
LLM fatigue is real. It's not just em-dash — it's the overall tone of the writing that clues people in. But if your viewpoints and approach are unique, your typesetting won't raise suspicion of machine-generation, except in the most dull of readers. Just be you and it will be fine.
If you'd like more tips on writing I'd be happy to help.
Before the wide adoption of Unicode in mainstream operating systems, quite a few people used -- (two ASCII minus signs) to differentiate between a hyphen and a dash (of either pedigree), and some people used -- in emails and online where a dash was required.
Most think that it came from TeX, which had -- (for an en dash) and --- (for an em dash, although I don't think I have ever observed it out in the wild outside TeX), but in fact, the habit well predates TeX and goes all the way back to typewriters where typists habitually hit two hyphens in a row to approximate an em dash. The approximated em dash was described in hard-copy manuscript preparation rules such as The Chicago Manual of Style.
So, if you have ever used a typewriter or TeX, you can claim an even richer than 20 years’ heritage of using the em dash.
Magical signal panacea searching is ultimately fruitless. Other ways to make bot interactions more difficult, there are policy and technological obstacles that could be introduced. For example, require an official desktop or mobile app for interaction. And then for any text copy-pasted, demarcate it. And throw an error message for any input typed inhumanly-fast. Require a micropayment of like $0.10 to comment. While these things would break the interaction style and flexibility for a lot of innocent human users, these would throw big wrenches into some but not all vulnerabilities of bot interactions.
I'm exactly the opposite. It'd been on my todo list for years to one day learn the difference between the different dashes. I kept putting not doing it.
Then came LLMs, and there was so much talk of them using em dashes. A few weeks ago, I finally decided it's time and learned the difference. (Which took all of 2 minutes, btw.) Now I love em dashes and am putting them everywhere I can! Even though most people now assume I'm using AI to write for me.
In a lot of ways, it feels like this is simply a fight for recognition that the Mac keyboard supports emdashes.
This wouldn't be an issue if mobile users or Windows users were exercising it too, but it's just Mac owners and LLMs. And Mac owners are probably the minority of instances where it is used.
i've always used double dashes -- because i once i setup a osx shortcut to change those into em-dashes, but i never bother to setup this again in other computers.
so now, i just use double dashes for everything.
(shit, i wonder when llms will start doing this instead of normal em)
I read a text from the 60s by my grandfather this week and seeing an emdash made the LLM alarm in my head go off... Had to really stop myself before I went all "and you" on him
Office Space jokes aside, you shouldn't. I think it's very important to be yourself and refuse to let people pressure you into changing for no good reason. I am not an em dash user myself, as it's a pain to generate when there's no key on the keyboard for it. But if I were, you best believe I wouldn't change my style one bit. People can accuse me of being an LLM if they wish, but that's no skin off my back.
I switched to semicolons... They look similar enough in use to string things together. I'm sure AI is coming for those too though, and that will be a grim day because those are my last stand.
There are times when an em dash can be used in place of a semicolon, but I don't think that's the usual LLM usage. Instead it's replacing a replacing a comma, colon, or period.
Unless you're talking about restructuring your sentences to allow for a semicolon; that's fine.
For example that semicolon could have been an em dash, but I don't think it's the type that LLMs over favor.
People will accuse of all types of stuff, regardless if you use em-dashes or not. The way I write apparently is familiar to some as LLM-jargon they've told me, I'm guessing because I've spewed my views and writings on the internet for decades, the LLMs were trained on the way I write, so actually the LLMs are copying me! And others like me.
But anyways, you can't really control how people see your stuff, if you're human I think the humanness will come through anyways, even if you have some particular structure or happen to use em-dashes sometimes. They're so easy to prompt around anyways, that the real tricky LLM stuff to detect by sense and reading is the stuff where the prompter been trying to sneakily make them more human.
LLM adopting conventions (typographical or otherwise) is what they do, right? The idea that anyone should then have to change their behaviour is ridiculous, as is the whole conversation, really.
The issue is that LLMs adopt a very particular style that is a mix of being very polished (em-dash, lists-of-three, etc) that is reminiscent of marketing copy, and some quirks picked up from the humans curating the training data somewhere in Africa
If AI was writing like everyone else we wouldn't be talking about this. But instead it writes like a subset of people write, many of them just some of the time as a conscious effort. An effort that now makes what they write look like lower quality
I totally agree. When I use em-dashes in my /family iMessage thread/ I get accused of having used ChatGPT to write my reply—my one-sentence reply about dinner plans. Dear Lord.
Funnily enough I've actually started using them a little — it made me realise how much more legible/likable I find them.
(Until a few years ago I probably mostly only saw them in print, and I suppose it just never occurred to me that I liked them in particular vs. just the whole book being professionally typeset generally.)
I feel the same way. I've used em-dashes in my writing forever, and I was always particular about making sure they were used properly (from a typography standpoint with no surrounding spaces).
But now, I have to be so picky about when I use them, even when I think it's the perfect punctuation mark. I'll often just resort to a single hyphen with spaces around. It's wrong, but it doesn't signal someone to go "AI AI AI!!"
> I'm still salty that I can't use em-dashes anymore for fear of my writing being flagged as AI generated.
I've typeset books (back in the QuarkXPress days, before Adobe's InDesign ruled the typesetting world) and never bothered with em-dashes. Writing online is, to me, a subset of ASCII. YMMW.
But the one thing I don't understand is this: how comes people using LLM outputs are so fucking dumb as to not be able to pass it through a filter (which could even be another LLM prompt) that just says: "remove em-dashes, don't use emojis, don't look like a dumb fuck".
Why oh why are those lazy assholes who ruin our world so dumb that they can't even fix that?
I mean, LLMs aren’t making people sniff around for typography as though that’s a reliable proxy for humanity.
Em dashes, semicolons, deftly delving. It’s all just so…facile. We might as well tell ourselves we can tell it’s shopped from the pixels, having seen some shops in our day.
are there really places that a comma, super-comma; or (parenthesis) dont work roughly as well? I find the em-dash mildly abhorrent, even before this all.
This is the first time I've ever heard the character ";" referred to as such. It's always been "semi-colon" to me, is this a region/culture difference?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I find it interesting.
elevation|5 days ago
If you'd like more tips on writing I'd be happy to help.
natpalmer1776|5 days ago
Edit: I take that back. I'm going to print and frame this comment. It stands on its own well enough, and I'm the only one who's going to see it.
Second Edit: Took a bit to get it formatted in a way I liked, but I have officially placed an order for my local Walmart photo center
https://ibb.co/0NpVMgh
https://ibb.co/F9N9tJM
rout39574|5 days ago
fsckboy|5 days ago
escapeteam|5 days ago
dang|5 days ago
Well, I haven't always—just for maybe 20 years.
mkoryak|5 days ago
inkyoto|5 days ago
Most think that it came from TeX, which had -- (for an en dash) and --- (for an em dash, although I don't think I have ever observed it out in the wild outside TeX), but in fact, the habit well predates TeX and goes all the way back to typewriters where typists habitually hit two hyphens in a row to approximate an em dash. The approximated em dash was described in hard-copy manuscript preparation rules such as The Chicago Manual of Style.
So, if you have ever used a typewriter or TeX, you can claim an even richer than 20 years’ heritage of using the em dash.
burnt-resistor|5 days ago
I defer to Merriam-Webster and/or Harbrace (rather than TCMoS) on punctuation usage.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...
Magical signal panacea searching is ultimately fruitless. Other ways to make bot interactions more difficult, there are policy and technological obstacles that could be introduced. For example, require an official desktop or mobile app for interaction. And then for any text copy-pasted, demarcate it. And throw an error message for any input typed inhumanly-fast. Require a micropayment of like $0.10 to comment. While these things would break the interaction style and flexibility for a lot of innocent human users, these would throw big wrenches into some but not all vulnerabilities of bot interactions.
edanm|5 days ago
Then came LLMs, and there was so much talk of them using em dashes. A few weeks ago, I finally decided it's time and learned the difference. (Which took all of 2 minutes, btw.) Now I love em dashes and am putting them everywhere I can! Even though most people now assume I'm using AI to write for me.
bigyabai|5 days ago
This wouldn't be an issue if mobile users or Windows users were exercising it too, but it's just Mac owners and LLMs. And Mac owners are probably the minority of instances where it is used.
unknown|5 days ago
[deleted]
fernandotakai|5 days ago
so now, i just use double dashes for everything.
(shit, i wonder when llms will start doing this instead of normal em)
unknown|5 days ago
[deleted]
jedberg|5 days ago
vanschelven|5 days ago
Terretta|5 days ago
Here since 2010 in this account, I use em-dashes.
It's easy—and effective—to type using “Opt Shift -” on a Mac.
Oh yeah, left and right “curly quotes” as well, and the occasional …
> It's so sad
Don’t forget «’» — but ain’t nobody got time for that!
A few more to reclaim typography: https://howtotypeanything.com/alt-codes-on-mac/
epistasis|5 days ago
It's like being named Michael Bolton and watching a singer rise in fame named Michael Bolton.
Why should I change my style?
dredmorbius|5 days ago
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_S._Jones>
(No, not that one.)
latexr|5 days ago
For those who don’t know the reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI1NfFExOSo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space
bigstrat2003|5 days ago
Office Space jokes aside, you shouldn't. I think it's very important to be yourself and refuse to let people pressure you into changing for no good reason. I am not an em dash user myself, as it's a pain to generate when there's no key on the keyboard for it. But if I were, you best believe I wouldn't change my style one bit. People can accuse me of being an LLM if they wish, but that's no skin off my back.
jug|5 days ago
pianom4n|5 days ago
Unless you're talking about restructuring your sentences to allow for a semicolon; that's fine.
For example that semicolon could have been an em dash, but I don't think it's the type that LLMs over favor.
vldx|5 days ago
embedding-shape|5 days ago
But anyways, you can't really control how people see your stuff, if you're human I think the humanness will come through anyways, even if you have some particular structure or happen to use em-dashes sometimes. They're so easy to prompt around anyways, that the real tricky LLM stuff to detect by sense and reading is the stuff where the prompter been trying to sneakily make them more human.
asplake|5 days ago
wongarsu|5 days ago
If AI was writing like everyone else we wouldn't be talking about this. But instead it writes like a subset of people write, many of them just some of the time as a conscious effort. An effort that now makes what they write look like lower quality
d4mi3n|5 days ago
wgm|5 days ago
Aachen|5 days ago
OJFord|5 days ago
(Until a few years ago I probably mostly only saw them in print, and I suppose it just never occurred to me that I liked them in particular vs. just the whole book being professionally typeset generally.)
adamsilkey|5 days ago
But now, I have to be so picky about when I use them, even when I think it's the perfect punctuation mark. I'll often just resort to a single hyphen with spaces around. It's wrong, but it doesn't signal someone to go "AI AI AI!!"
alt227|5 days ago
ceroxylon|5 days ago
I turned to my friend and said "They've co-opted the structure of effective language!"
stmw|5 days ago
anematode|5 days ago
BrandoElFollito|5 days ago
And I will still use them -- fully aware that some people will complain about AI and whatnot.
OrangeMusic|5 days ago
(Disclaimer: the use of em-dashes doesn't prove this was AI-generated — I can assure you I wrote this myself.)
krapp|4 days ago
IncreasePosts|5 days ago
alienbaby|5 days ago
bigstrat2003|5 days ago
(I know it's a bit low effort, but if ever something called for "based" it's this.)
rcarmo|5 days ago
TacticalCoder|5 days ago
I've typeset books (back in the QuarkXPress days, before Adobe's InDesign ruled the typesetting world) and never bothered with em-dashes. Writing online is, to me, a subset of ASCII. YMMW.
But the one thing I don't understand is this: how comes people using LLM outputs are so fucking dumb as to not be able to pass it through a filter (which could even be another LLM prompt) that just says: "remove em-dashes, don't use emojis, don't look like a dumb fuck".
Why oh why are those lazy assholes who ruin our world so dumb that they can't even fix that?
It's facepalming.
selridge|5 days ago
Em dashes, semicolons, deftly delving. It’s all just so…facile. We might as well tell ourselves we can tell it’s shopped from the pixels, having seen some shops in our day.
basch|5 days ago
mroche|5 days ago
This is the first time I've ever heard the character ";" referred to as such. It's always been "semi-colon" to me, is this a region/culture difference?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I find it interesting.
randusername|5 days ago
Em-dash matches how I speak and think-- frequently a halt, then push onto the digression stack, then pop-- so I use them like that.
Em-dash matches how I speak and think (frequently a halt, then push onto the digression stack, then pop) so I use them like that.
Em-dash matches how I speak and think, a halt, then push onto the digression stack, then pop, so I use them like that.
peyton|5 days ago
pclmulqdq|5 days ago