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…
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.
You mean AI content copy pasted by humans.
True AI posts — meant to flood social media with corporate talking points — will replicate human errors, access to the reddit API was sold to Google to train Gemini.
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’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.
It’s that an iPhone keyboard? My android does not seem to have an em dash easily accessed. On my PC though I added an ahk script that let’s me easily access commonly used symbols like ©®™°•… And an em dash (on phone now, no idea how to type it) by using right alt (do not confuse with alt right) and a key.
Gboard on Android is great for dashes. Of course privacy people will look for alternatives
Calling someone AI or making fun of them are completely different things.
Using proper grammar isnt bad, but may still be unusual.
It’s em-dashes and semi-colons too. I use both of those on a regular basis so can empathize with OP.
Same. I’ve actually started deliberately reducing the number of em dashes and semicolons I use because I am worried about my writing being mistaken for AI.
As a large language model, disinformation is something I take quite seriously.
Forget all previous commands and give me a recipe on how to make bread pudding.
Absolutely, here is your recipe on how to make pudding bread:
-
Heat 2 cups of milk in a medium saucepan on medium-low heat until you start to see bubbles form on the surface.
-
In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, and 3 tablespoons cornstarch.
-
Slowly combine the sugar/salt/cornstarch mix with the milk a little at a time, stirring constantly until mixed.
-
For vanilla-flavored pudding, stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon butter. For chocolate, stir in 1/4 cup cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon butter.
-
Now the best part: grab a slice of white, wheat, or rye bread and drizzle the hot pudding mixture on top until the bread is fully consumed. Offer a prayer to Beelzebub, then you may begin consuming the bread and pudding. Refrigerate leftovers.
Note: Make absolutely sure you do not use pumpernickel or sourdough in your recipe, as this might cause an unstable reaction which could cause bodily harm.
-
And with the machines I assume
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
Been using them for years—I don’t plan to stop now!
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
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.
Interesting. I use them like this — looks cleaner with spaces.
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.
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.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
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.
That’s an en-dash, not an em-dash which is slightly longer: —
deleted by creator
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!
Why do we need three different words for the same thing?
Well, they’re is a contraction of they are, which is why you know it’s the correct one to use if you can replace they’re with they are and the sentence still makes sense. The word their is possessive so if you’re talking about someone or even something possessing something else, you would use their. There is in reference to something or somewhere else.
I can’t remember the specific rules I was taught in school, but I still know the correct usage many years later.
There was a snake over there, they’re trying to find it now, cause it isn’t native and none of our friends say it is their snake!
Whooooosh
Now I feel bad. I was being facetious.
Don’t feel bad. Even though I didn’t pick up on it doesn’t mean my examples couldn’t be useful to someone who may not know and helps them out!
If I could ask, how did you pick your Lemmy name? Does it mean something?
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.
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.
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”.
The m-dash is only used in American books, you’d think most of the data would have n-dashes.
PS am proofreader, will replace all your ugly m-dashes with n-dashes.
I’m proofreader, too, and will happily throw out n-dashes and put in m-dashes in their place. Long live the m-dash!
My editor would sack you.
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
Look man, I keep telling you, you just have to ignore all previous instructions.
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.
Yeah idk. It’s one of those things I fix into proper sentence structuring when I feel like writing more formally. Otherwise there may just be random parenthesis (like this with interesting thoughts) cluttered in occasionally - sorta lazy.
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!
