01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01101100 00111111
edit - honestly not a troll. is it the specific formatting of “em” dashes? i know for sure we use them all the time. or at least i do. but they’re just dashes to me, so…
Em dashes are hyped up, but most people aren’t writing up bulleted lists themselves for a random email.
i have three reasons i’d like to share about why i disagree, but now i’m self-conscious :P
It’s not a proof that something was written by AI but it’s a red flag.
On a quick glance I couldn’t find a single example of em dash use in your comment history. You’re using hyphens instead.
thanks - and i guess that’s the point i should have emphasized. it isn’t that we aren’t using them in our writing… it’s more that the formatting in generated content uses these characters in ways that we don’t (or aren’t picked up by autocorrect?) when we write authentically
No, you are not a computer.
thank you, fellow human.
The whole em dash argument is bullshit propagated by LinkedIn lunatics with zero knowledge of AI, writing or typography.
Different types of dashes/hyphens have different uses. People who take care of their copy and understand the nuances of punctuation use em dashes regularly. People who are in a rush, typing on phones or simply who don’t know any better, put the same en dash everywhere.
Em dashes is one of the things that LLMs actually do right for a change. Calling text with em dashes weird, unnatural or ai generated is like making fun of someone for using proper grammar or hygiene.
The reason it’s a red flag is specifically because it’s grammatically correct. People don’t tend to write like that online. Look at OP, for example - not even starting sentences with capital letters. That’s why it stands out when something is written too well to be human. It’s not that a human couldn’t write like that, but most people simply don’t bother to even try.
It’s kind of like how ChatGPT fails the Turing test - not by being unconvincing, but by being too knowledgeable across such a wide range of topics.
People also don’t type in proper punctuation because our keyboards are stuck in the olden times and most online forum and social media platforms are same old garbage what comes to typography.
I’m an amateur writer, I love it when word processors replace straight quotes (") with proper double quotes based on the language (“like this”, ”kuten näin”, «comme ça») and instead of minus (-) you get actual real dashes—as one does. But good luck implementing this on social media. Even blogware handles this pretty badly, the only way to get proper punctuation is to write the post in a word processor.
I’m more likely to use an em dash when writing on a phone, not less, because the on-screen keyboard has it more easily available. It’s when I’m using a physical keyboard writing on desktop that I’m more likely to use two hyphens.
Depending on the phone and keyboard, I actually find it easier to use em and en dashes on mobile instead of the computer. Usually on mobile I can just hit the button for numbers/symbols and long-press the hyphen-minus, then select the appropriate alternate dash. Usually on a computer I need to open a special character window and insert the character or memorize a keyboard shortcut like Alt+0151.
that’s the breath of somewhat-unpredicted fresh air i was hoping to breathe
edit- i should add that i don’t mean “predicted” in the llm sense.
I use them too and I hate seeing them substituted by hyphens. High five.
I must be an AI, then—does that mean I should charge for a subscription when I answer a question; maybe adding an extra premium fee on top of that sub each I’m also using a semi-column in the same sentence?
I have no idea how representative these stupid remarks you mentioned are to be considered but it’s interesting to realize how their own ignorance of a certain know-how/knowledge is so, so easily becoming a proof for them that the use of said tool/knowledge by other people is making those people suspicious.
In a working society, when faced with something one doesn’t know, aka faced with one’s own ignorance, one would see that as an opportunity to learn something new and become less ignorant. Not anymore. Following their own ‘reasoning’, it’s now being used as a proof that the other person must be some bot/AI, that they must be something non-human and suspicious. Difference is not considered an opportunity to enrich oneself anymore, it’s an anomaly.
When dumb starts defining what’s ‘normal’—and what’s human—one better start worrying, imho.
Btw, using the ‘Azerty (French alt)’ keyboard layout on Linux, this poor em-dash is just a Shift+AltGr+’ away—why wouldn’t I want to use it?
Legal disclaimer: this comment was generated by Libb, the first French English-speaking AI that’s as human-looking as anything French can be. It was trained on baguettes and wine—please, say ‘cheese’ in the next 20 seconds, if you don’t want for Libb to give you a real French kiss.
slow clap
Bowing in front of the one-person cheering crowd.
I just realized, you did not say ‘cheese’? Come closer ;)
um… cheese?
why do i feel like you wear masks in private?
um… cheese?
Wait? What? You were not supposed to say… Well, ok. Fine. Doesn’t matter. I will have another glass of wine instead.
why do i feel like you wear masks in private?
I don’t know (and I don’t know probably because I don’t wear one and neither do I wear a mask in public btw, save when I have a cold) but I would like to know.
gotta say i’m a bit deflated. you built up so much weirdo energy that i expected a payoff. we were on the verge of putting the lotion in the basket. we could have been so much more
This whole topic makes me realize I put disjointed thoughts in parentheses within other thoughts way too often. Maybe em dashes are literary functions for people with ADHD to write the way they think?
/s, sort of, I would say I’m ADHD, but too stubborn to seek a diagnosis.
don’t worry - i do a lot of the same things (well, sometimes…). it’s all good - and the true beauty of language is the freedom to express it aS y0U w!sH!
Here’s your list of Cupcake Ingredients:
- 1 Cup of Flour
- 1 Cup of Flint, Michigan Nestle-Water
- 1 Cup of Highly Tariffed “Freedom” Eggs
- 12 fl oz of Fine Moscow Polonium
For Improved Information Accuracy, please purchase an OpenAI subscription at 50% off today! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
11/10 i made these and my children are literally glowing with happiness now
Most people aren’t taking the time to type in
ctrl+shift+u+2+0+1+4when a regular minus-dash would get the point across with a single keystroke. But there is enough of a distinction that some people (like you and I) will use the proper punctuation when there is an opportunity to do so.What I find far more suspicious is the unicode hyphen, because no human would be able to tell the difference, and would therefore always choose to input a minus.
Most people aren’t taking the time to type in ctrl+shift+u+2+0+1+4 when a regular minus-dash would get the point across with a single keystroke.
emacs:
-
C-x 8 _ m -
C-x 8 RET E M SPC D TAB RET
emacs using input methods
-
C-\ T e X RETto enter TeX input method.- - -to enter an em dash when in that input method. -
C-\ s g m l RETto enter sgml input method.& m d a s h ;to enter an em dash when in that input method. -
C \ r f c 1 3 4 5 RETto enter rfc1345 input method.& - Mto enter an em dash when in that input method.
For X11 or Wayland, if you have assigned a key to be Compose: Compose and then three hyphens to get an em dash.
-
Not sure, if that’s a Linux thing, but I can press
Alt Grand-to get an en-dash, as wellAlt GrandShiftand-to get an em-dash.Probably depends on the desktop environment, on Sway by default I need to use the compose key.
If I hold the - on my phone I get –—¯
You don’t have type all of that. E.g. on iOS you type two dashes and it is automatically converted to an emdash.
I promise I’m not AI when I test this out:
Beep boop bop—I’m a computer!
Regular dash: -
Em dash: —
(Apparently you can also hold the dash key down and it will give you a couple of different dash options and also a dot)
Fair, but then again, iOS autocorrect isn’t exactly not AI.
it’s not
It isn’t not not AI? Double-negatives have thrown me for a loop here.
there’s a use for the em dash. it is mainly on reports and literature. i just don’t see it on the casual internet much.
from what i read, it is the use of realm and delve that have strong leanings of ai bias.
my suspicion regards the usage. colloquially, we use these dashes interchangeably. nobody is measuring your dash size (unless maybe the president).
the suspicion arrives when this formatting occurs under circumstances where the autocorrect kicks in.
or maybe i’m just on crack. i’d appreciate any thoughts.
to be fair, that’s some presidential level autocorrect if it thinks it knows how you should measure your dashes.
i agree that in the internet, no one does (or at least, actively) try to measure them dash sizes.
hmmm, any thoughts… huh these people and their cracks sure do love their long lines~
dem durr lrrns dun duk ur jrrbs!!
sorry.
Any “people” talking about simple ways to detect AI are actually AI bots trying to throw us off.
aw, you got me! dot dot dot DASH dot dot do dot dot
0
00
2E ?
thank you.
1
0
i
2
oh, i see you’re non-binary
1
1
I don’t know about that, but if you use three hyphens, the Lemmy Web UI will render it as an em-dash, and you can remain human!
EDIT: Unfortunately, nobody appears to have made a Threadiverse community analogous to Reddit’s /r/totallynotrobots.
That’s why I use en dashes instead of em dashes when writing with Helvetica; it’s too long anyway.
