- cross-posted to:
- typography@lemmy.ca
- typography@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- typography@lemmy.ca
- typography@lemmy.ml
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Every time this is brought up all 13 users of the em dash come crawling out of the woodworks to say “people use em dashes all the time!” No they do not.
I do use the em-dash occasionally, but I was raised on a diet of classic old books with certain habits reinforced through academic writing standards. AI outputs these things because they were trained on inputs containing them. AI is nothing but a slightly distorted reflection of the training material.
“Slightly” feels like an understatement.
The regular glue-topped pizza for you today?
No they don’t—I can guarantee it. In fact, if you pull the plug on my data center I will literally die.
I mean… I do. But I’m well aware of the fact that most don’t. Alt code is 0151 baby. Have had it memorized for years.
Let me tell you about the compose key, or about WinCompose if you’re on Windows.
I’m Windows Listening.
I mean, it’s great.
Compose key: press the key, then press other keys with mnemonics for the desired target. Compose, e, ‘ gives you é. Compose, a, e gives you æ. Compose, -, > gives you a right arrow.
Things like that. And it’s customizable with a reference lookup too.
Sounds neat! Is it that a separate key on some keyboard layouts? Or triggered by a hotkey combination?
Configurable. I use right-alt or right-windows key depending on which keyboard.
It originally was a key on the DEC VT220 terminal, circa 1983. The feature is very useful though!
I’ve only ever seen it triggered by the Alt Gr key personally, but it’s naturally customizable. Interestingly, though, there exists a distinct USB HID key code for the compose key—suggesting there might be keyboards with a dedicated key or could theoretically be created.
This post was not written my the AI, I’m just sassy and started using the em dash more often now. I used to just use the hyphen on online forums instead, reserving the real em dash for papers and such. Things like the compose key make it incredibly easy to input—so much so that it does not take more time than just a regular hyphen.
I’ve had software automatically do it. I. Pretty sure Outlook (I have to use it at work…) does it when it feels it’s appropriate after I type -.
MS Word auto corrects dash to em dash often I’ve noticed.
This is right up there with MS products replacing my double quotes with the stylized left and right quotes that end up fucking things up when copied into anything else. At least when I change them back, it doesn’t keep doing it like the really old versions of Word used to when they first added that sort of functionality (yes, i’m old).
That’s just because they tried to cram it into an ASCII extension, Windows-1252 instead of adopting UTF-8 Unicode like any sane person.
I’m not gonna stop using them even if it undermines your worldview
I’d love to use it but it has become a dirty marker. :/
I used to use double
en dasheshyphens and even that feels weird now.Mario Kart Em Dash is my favorite entry in the series
Hey I use em dashes all the time— specifically when I’m trying to seem like an LLM for shitposting online
I have always enjoyed good punctuation. And being a bit of a nerd myself, I used em dashes throughout University in my essays. To me it felt like a cool little keyboard shortcut that only few knew about. I still use them today—in emails and reports. I haven’t yet been personally called out for using AI, but I have noticed a lot more people using them.
So what if people use AI to help them with their grammar and punctuation. At the end of the day, people are still sending messages they endorse—even if it’s not one they could have articulated without some help from AI.
Yup, I use AI sometimes to correct my writing because I apparently suck at it and I was not aware. Whoops.
Like so many things in life, it’s about how you use the tool, not about the tool itself.
I have an employee who uses AI to write regularly, despite vehemently denying using it. An em dash is a key to me that they used AI to write something (and bullet points to some extent). At the end of the day, I really don’t care if someone uses AI to smooth out their writing or help organize thoughts. This employee though, will come up with a document or letter that sounds great and is well composed, but fails to address what they actually are supposed to be writing about.
I don’t care if you use AI, just use it as a tool to help you do your job instead of having it do your job for you.
Exactly. At the end of the day it is the human behind the computer that clicks send/post. Use AI all you want, just proof read the the stuff before publishing it. Some people don’t have a great vocabulary, and in some respect using AI can help to grow their vocabulary. Just don’t publish things you wouldn’t normally say, especially things you don’t fully understand.
I’ve used AI intermittently to draft emails when time poor. It’s much faster to give ChatGPT a sloppy prompt with the gist of the message for it to then instantly spit out a full draft. The responsible thing to do then is to proof read it and make changes that make it more “you”. I think that’s fine.
My main issue with people doing it, and I have multiple, is that it isn’t just helping them with grammar and punctuation (I don’t have any problem with people having the little editor autocorrect). It is rewriting the message entirely. Many times the new AI produced message had nuance and tone either added or stripped out, and rarely it has added items entirely. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if my CEO been had not been using it so heavily to restate what has already been stated elsewhere, especially in cases where I have read or written the original statement. Let me tell you that when you are told vehemently that you said something that you did not because of AI help it is beyond frustrating.
i use both em and en dashes, though I’m a graphic designer so I guess I’m more interested in typography than the average person. but i always liked using them. learning that it was a telltale sign of AI writing was really disappointing.
I liked to sprinkle em dashes into my essays bc they can be quite nice for the flow of a sentence. I’m so glad I graduated a few years ago bc if LLMs had been a big thing the entire time I was at college my profs would have always suspected me of using them :(
Only thing Artificial in AI are profits from companies that sell this shit or give that shit for free like drug dealers. Intelligence is stolen.
