people keep talking about how "em dashes" are evidence of ai. i use them all the time. am i a computer now?

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.

Been using them for years—I don’t plan to stop now!

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• 1 Cup of Flour
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Ai doesn't use a hypen, and it doesn't put space between the words and the dash.

For example, If I were using a dash - I'd use it like this.

Ai uses it—like this.

AI finally teaching people correct typography. /s

I use em and en dashes according to traditional grammar rules. Been that way for years. It just looks and reads nicer. AI won’t take that from me.

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. 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.

Next you're going to tell me using an Oxford comma is AI. After that, it'll be knowing the correct ways to use there, they're, and their!

Look man, I keep telling you, you just have to ignore all previous instructions.

I use them too and I hate seeing them substituted by hyphens. High five.

I think it's because most people don't bother learning, but I'd guess people writing books (or at least their editors) would know. AI eats up all the books and learns how to use em dashes. The majority of the internet-using population does not use it. And so you get the heuristic that em dash = AI. This is just a total guess, by the way.

Looked up the difference between hyphens, em dashes, and en dashes in high school. Maybe for curiosity, maybe for some assignment, I forget by now. Started using em and en dashes, not going to stop now.

Any “people” talking about simple ways to detect AI are actually AI bots trying to throw us off.

I love dashes – they help better convey the flow of my thinking in written form.

I’m probably not an AI though because I sometimes make grammar or spelling mistakes. Since english isn’t my native language.

I also use em dashes. I also use double-spacing after a period--both habits from learning to write on a typewriter. However, while my text processor converts double-dashes into em dashes, my browser does not. So, when I see em dashes in a forum post, I naturally become suspicious. It is very rare for me to write a post in a text editor and then copy/paste it into a text area, and I assume this to be true with others as well.

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.

The em-dash is mostly used in books. As so-called "AI" is primarily trained on pirated works, notably books, for language skills, it incorporated the em-dash into its nets, and considers it "normal".

Today I learnt what an Em dash is

Em dashes are hyped up, but most people aren't writing up bulleted lists themselves for a random email.

No, you are not a computer.

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.

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.

0

TIL I'm ChatGPT

I'm learning a lot about myself today!

You're not a computer, you're just making terrible formatting choices.

It's an identifier in social media, not in mainstream news.

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.

Compare

—

(alt 0151)

to

-

(alt 45)

EDIT: Actually I don't think you're a troll, I think you're looking for tips to make your AI posts harder to detect by getting people to tell you what gives it away.

And for reference: No, you're not actually using em dashes. Although you already knew that, because if you can google a binary converter, you can google "em dash".

what's the deal?

01001110 01101001 01100011 01100101 00100000

That’s why I use en dashes instead of em dashes when writing with Helvetica; it’s too long anyway.

Yes - anyone could be