Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by jtwoodhouse on Monday August 11, 2025 @02:53PM
(#44867993)
Two things are true here. The em dash shouldn’t automatically be a sign of AI writing. That said, they’re also been quite overused in recent years, which is probably causing them to be overrepresented in models.
You shouldn’t have that many asides to squeeze in, and you don’t need a em dash to make a sentence punchy. All tricks lose their power if you come to depend on them too much.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by al_borland on Monday August 11, 2025 @02:44PM
(#44867871)
As someone who bothered to learn the keyboard shortcuts for the em dash and ellipsis, this makes me sad.
Even in posts not using these things, I’ve been accused of being an AI bot a few times now. I’m not sure what it is I’m doing that makes people think that. My natural reaction is to double down on whatever I was trying to explain, which seems to make things worse. Such is life…
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by mikestorrent on Monday August 11, 2025 @04:23PM
(#44869007)
Very much so! I used to write responses online in the classic GPT formula with lots of bullets etc. and now I am deliberately ensuring that I don't over-formalize grammar so as to provide people with a little bit of confidence that I'm real... for what it's worth.
I used to spend a lot of time arguing online. Now, with Dead Internet Theory, it feels like it's just hammering home how useless that all was.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by al_borland on Monday August 11, 2025 @08:13PM
(#44870926)
While I fully understand not wanting to argue things online when the dead internet theory has seemed to come true, I don’t think we should dumb ourselves down for it.
I also don’t think that will help. I saw an Odd Man Out video where humans and an AI were put into a box and they had to try and figure out who was the AI. If I remember correctly, the AI said it was purposely making some mistakes to better emulate a human.
We should seek to be better where AI falls, rather than sink to a level beneath AI and assume its superiority.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by BizarroLand on Monday August 11, 2025 @04:26PM
(#44869052)
Even when you are, people are on average so paranoid and suspicious of random internet strangers with malintent that the concept of reading a response while assuming good intentions has been lost.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by crmi on Monday August 11, 2025 @06:47PM
(#44870334)
Yep — on mainstream AI YouTube videos, I see a lot of comment replies accusing anyone of commenting with ai (if its a well weitten post, with punctuation).
Others chiming in "ran through ai detector, says 37% human 63% air — BOT" etc
YT comments were never a good place, but it's interesting to see this shift now its hit the masses
And interesting that no ones commenting about the robotic AI voice over... Instead pointing finger's at each other like the spiderman meme.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by al_borland on Monday August 11, 2025 @08:19PM
(#44870965)
I’m not a YouTube commenter, so I don’t have a horse in this race, but it seems like Google is in a very good position to know if a commenter is AI or not. It is very likely that their YouTube account is tied to a Gmail account… they know if that’s being used by a person or not.
Google’s unwillingness to tackle the comment problems has been a problem for years, long before AI. I recall seeing some videos on some scripts a guy wrote to flag and filter spam and bots on YouTube comments. Something Google could and should have done a long time ago. If they have done anything at all recently, it’s been due to public shaming from top creators on the platform.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by unethical_ban on Monday August 11, 2025 @02:47PM
(#44867909)
I used to secretly assume any comment on reddit that uses direction quotation marks ” “ vs " " are bot or AI generated. But I believe that's just how iOS does it?
I wish a comment being completely vapid or trollish were indicator enough.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by nativeit on Monday August 11, 2025 @05:17PM
(#44869571)
That’s a great point. Let me see if I can find a new way to word my reply—specifically, I will read through the comments above this, and consider other perspectives that might be relevant—and then try to answer your question again.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by firasd on Monday August 11, 2025 @05:40PM
(#44869787)
> (Disclosure: The Globe and Mail style guide mandates the use of en dashes, which is why you won’t see em dashes used here.)
What does this mean? You can't use an en dash as a 'dash'. It's for specialized applications like saying 1994-1995 etc. I think the author (or whoever came up with this 'rule') is confused here
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by crazygringo on Monday August 11, 2025 @06:46PM
(#44870320)
> You can't use an en dash as a 'dash'.
Actually you can, and it's relatively common.
One way—like this—is to use em dashes without surrounding spaces, to denote a pause.
The other way – like this – is to use en dashes with surrounding spaces. This functions like an em dash, but is technically an en dash. The linked article has dashes like this throughout. (Then you still use an en dash for numbers like 11–13, but without the spaces.)
It's just two different typographical conventions.
Edit: to be clear, these are both still different from hyphens. In typesetting, don't ever do this-or this - as hyphens are for, well, hyphenation.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by milchek on Monday August 11, 2025 @06:52PM
(#44870370)
This is the way that I’ve been writing for years, mainly because I was too lazy to use the key or shortcut for em dash. But also because in school no one ever made a big deal about the length of the dash when writing - or I just wasn’t paying enough attention.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by perilunar on Monday August 11, 2025 @11:58PM
(#44872259)
What most people think of as a hyphen (the key at the top-right of the keyboard) is actually a hyphen-minus (-, U+002D). Unicode has separate hyphen (‐, U+2010) and minus (−, U+2212) symbols, as well as a couple of others.
(If you want negative numbers to look right at small font sizes use a minus sign instead of hyphen-minus.)
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by gucci-on-fleek on Monday August 11, 2025 @09:01PM
(#44871208)
I myself prefer to use em dashes in this case, but spaced en dashes are an accepted alternative:
The Chicago Manual of Style §6.89 “En dash as em dash”
> In contemporary British usage, an en dash (with space before and after) is usually preferred to the em dash as punctuation in running text – like this – a practice that is followed by some non-British publications as well. See also 6.91.
The Elements of Typographic Style §5.2.1 “Use spaced en dashes…”
> Use spaced en dashes – rather than close-set em dashes or spaced hyphens – to set off phrases.
> […]
> In typescript, a double hyphen (--) is often used for a long dash. Double hyphens in a typeset document are a sure sign that the type was set by a typist, not a typographer. A typographer will use an em dash, three-quarter em, or en dash, depending on context or personal style. The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography. Used as a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal word space either side.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by jedberg on Monday August 11, 2025 @06:50PM
(#44870352)
As a proficient writer who has been using proper grammar and em dashes for decades, it really makes me sad that writing with proper grammar and em dashes is now suspicious.
Re:Why the em dash is attracting unfair suspicion
by electroly on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @02:50AM
(#44873169)
They really couldn't have used a single em dash in this article? Not even to demonstrate an em dash in a quotation?! Are violations of the The Globe and Mail style guide punishable by death?
You shouldn’t have that many asides to squeeze in, and you don’t need a em dash to make a sentence punchy. All tricks lose their power if you come to depend on them too much.
Even in posts not using these things, I’ve been accused of being an AI bot a few times now. I’m not sure what it is I’m doing that makes people think that. My natural reaction is to double down on whatever I was trying to explain, which seems to make things worse. Such is life…
I used to spend a lot of time arguing online. Now, with Dead Internet Theory, it feels like it's just hammering home how useless that all was.
I also don’t think that will help. I saw an Odd Man Out video where humans and an AI were put into a box and they had to try and figure out who was the AI. If I remember correctly, the AI said it was purposely making some mistakes to better emulate a human.
We should seek to be better where AI falls, rather than sink to a level beneath AI and assume its superiority.
YT comments were never a good place, but it's interesting to see this shift now its hit the masses
And interesting that no ones commenting about the robotic AI voice over... Instead pointing finger's at each other like the spiderman meme.
Google’s unwillingness to tackle the comment problems has been a problem for years, long before AI. I recall seeing some videos on some scripts a guy wrote to flag and filter spam and bots on YouTube comments. Something Google could and should have done a long time ago. If they have done anything at all recently, it’s been due to public shaming from top creators on the platform.
I wish a comment being completely vapid or trollish were indicator enough.
It works for me.
The best solution for me is to touch grass daily.
MacOS, too.
https://archive.ph/xmefn
That’s a great point.
If you run it through Bayes theorem, the increase in probability that a given text is AI-generated if it contains an em dash is negligible.
If you disagree share your prior, marginal, and likelihoods.
What does this mean? You can't use an en dash as a 'dash'. It's for specialized applications like saying 1994-1995 etc. I think the author (or whoever came up with this 'rule') is confused here
Actually you can, and it's relatively common.
One way—like this—is to use em dashes without surrounding spaces, to denote a pause.
The other way – like this – is to use en dashes with surrounding spaces. This functions like an em dash, but is technically an en dash. The linked article has dashes like this throughout. (Then you still use an en dash for numbers like 11–13, but without the spaces.)
It's just two different typographical conventions.
Edit: to be clear, these are both still different from hyphens. In typesetting, don't ever do this-or this - as hyphens are for, well, hyphenation.
(If you want negative numbers to look right at small font sizes use a minus sign instead of hyphen-minus.)
The Chicago Manual of Style §6.89 “En dash as em dash”
> In contemporary British usage, an en dash (with space before and after) is usually preferred to the em dash as punctuation in running text – like this – a practice that is followed by some non-British publications as well. See also 6.91.
The Elements of Typographic Style §5.2.1 “Use spaced en dashes…”
> Use spaced en dashes – rather than close-set em dashes or spaced hyphens – to set off phrases.
> […]
> In typescript, a double hyphen (--) is often used for a long dash. Double hyphens in a typeset document are a sure sign that the type was set by a typist, not a typographer. A typographer will use an em dash, three-quarter em, or en dash, depending on context or personal style. The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography. Used as a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal word space either side.