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A comment on New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes.

Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by maurycyz on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:17AM (#47153571)
Most people want to avoid looking like AI, ut what if you want to blend in with the robot uprising.

I present ⸻ the U+2E3B dash.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by isoprophlex on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:20AM (#47153620)
The Big Chungus of dashes. Could this be the character that has the widest rendering?!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by have_faith on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:25AM (#47153713)
Unlikely in non-english languages (I seem to remember some super wide Arabic "single character" ones...?)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by MarioMan on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:33AM (#47153825)
Last I’d checked, “﷽”is the widest Unicode character.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by OJFord on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @12:25PM (#47154599)
It's rendering visibly narrower than the big dash up thread for me, on FF on Android. (Maybe HN's stripping one or more of the combining chars though, so it's not actually showing what you meant in full?)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by yorwba on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @12:34PM (#47154753)
It depends on the font, of course. Some renditions look like regular Arabic text, others are much narrower: https://fonts.google.com/?preview.text=%EF%B7%BD&script=Arab
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by brcmthrowaway on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @01:26PM (#47155557)
I fear for the children who had to memorize this.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by mghackerlady on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @03:26PM (#47157355)
It isn't a special letter or symbol in arabic, it's just a regular sentence that was added to unicode since it both holds symbolic meaning in islam and is used often enough to be useful. Some fonts render it like any other arabic, making it look like one big sentence as a single character, but others render it as calligraphy
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by elinear on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @01:30PM (#47155630)
Just found another way to make my designer panic. We're launching Arabic soon too!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by 5o1ecist on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:45AM (#47154014)
> what if you want to blend in with the robot uprising.

There is nothing to fear, MY HUMAN FRIEND!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by MagicMoonlight on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:44AM (#47154010)
That’s a big dash
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Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by mardifoufs on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @01:19PM (#47155442)
For you. But is it the biggest dash? And what is its intended purpose? I've never seen one that big before.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by bombcar on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @02:11PM (#47156290)
⸻ the three em dash

apparently used like ellipses … to indicate part of a quote was removed.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by shmeeed on Thursday February 26, 2026 @08:17AM (#47165661)
That's what she said
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by NoiseBert69 on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @12:50PM (#47154998)
We avoid censorship by ⸻ more often and talking to ⸻ about ⸻.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by Aachen on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @02:20PM (#47156424)
Does this comment break HN for anyone else? I can press "next" on any other post, but not this one. And in the next post, pressing "prev" does not scroll to this one. It does nothing. Prev works fine when pressed on this (or any other) post
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by NicuCalcea on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @06:40PM (#47159660)
Works fine for me in Firefox.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:New accounts on HN 10x more likely to use EM-dashes by moebrowne on Thursday February 26, 2026 @10:05AM (#47167078)
For anyone wondering what this is actually used for:

> ...primarily used in scholarly and literary contexts to indicate a significant omission within a quoted passage, typically representing a full line, paragraph, or even multiple sentences of text

https://graphemica.com/%E2%B8%BB

[ Parent | on HN ]