For me, it would take some of the sting out of the break-up.
I would think to myself, “damn, how did I not realize that I was dating a lazy moron?”
I’m a markdown nerd who likes to use headers to break up longer post and sometimes properly buletpoint or put ASCII art in preformatted boxes. People who thinks they have the magic sauce on LLM generation detection because a post goes out of their way to do more than the bre minimum with punctuation or formatting is an asshole.
This is a meme post about em dashes, dawg
From the post title, description, and other peoples comments, I took away that the meme is m9re about suspecting your ex didnt even write their own breakup message based off the use of em dashes.
Its a cute surface level joke but it touches in a real nerve because Its becoming more and more common for you to be falsely accused of being an LLM and being told to "ignore all previous instructions and (some stupid instruction) based off small writing quirks like using em or markdown and top comments share this frustration too.
I shouldn’t have to feel self conscious about the way I write
Just to pass armchair llm detector wannabe vibe checks 🖕.Any time someone accuses me of being a bot I respond with “Tiananmen Winnie the Pooh 8647 Luigi Mangione” and that generally proves my humanity
I’m gonna steal that if you don’t mind
I mean most people are going to use their phones to write messages and given you can’t physically type an em dash it would be normal to be suspicious if you see one.
Edit: turns out you can physically type them. Still, given that it’s not normal to use them it’s a sign in my book.
— try long pressing your phone keyboards hyphen key.
Ok. You can physically type them I concede, but normal humans don’t use them. Still a sign.
I would bet that the amount of non proof writers that uses em dashes goes up just because people see that it’s associated with ai and want to be funny.
Several friends and I have always used them. They’re such a fun punctuation mark.
Yah but your user name is “LanguageIsCool” and you talk about the fun levels of various types of punctuation. You are definitely the outlier here. A cool outlier but an outlier none the less.
Em dash will sour your milk and lose your car keys. It will cause your socks to become odd pairs and fart in the lift when your crush alights. Em dash is responsible for the failure of the mars climate orbiter but ran a successful misinformation campaign against SI units.
I have a dream that one day my writing will not be judged by the frequency of my em dashes, but by the quality of my ideas.
What a deck, betch
Hasn’t word done this simce about offoce 2007? the autoformat as you type feature, specifically…
I only know this because I fucking hate it and have been religiously turning it off
Weirdly it usually turns hyphens into en dashes instead of em dashes from what I’ve seen, which makes no sense at all.
Hasn’t word done this simce about offoce 2007?
Imagine writing your breakup in Office 2007… I mean, at least use a free and open-source software like LibreOffice.
But, it’s a text, most likely written on mobile. If I got such text I would ask why they chose m dashes (to which I would get another llm answer)
I long for the day when we stop giving a fuck about how many pixels a dash has.
Jesus fucking christ it is so insufferable how long this goes on for.
M—Dash is an AI red flag.
Finally, something worse than being broken up with via text.
Every user of the em dash on the planet is in this comment section.
The fucking bastards took it from us
Using em dashes is cultured and also cool
Breakup via text is a blocked for life. Cowards don’t deserve your time
As someone who used to do shit like this all the time (perma-blocking people for perceived disrespect), it’s not a great way to live.
Yeah they made a shitty situation worse, but being a coward doesn’t make you a bad person. Besides, they’re almost certainly a kid.
I never got what’s the deal with that. Sincerely. If there’s a break up, what’s the difference doing it by text, phone or in person.
My gut says me that people may prefer in person because they saw a better chance of avoid the breakup that way, but I’m not sure.
Other than that if it’s over it’s over, I don’t see the media in which the message is deliver. For all I care as if it’s via smoke signals.
It’s about respect for the other person, as I see it. You wouldn’t be a little miffed if your wife of 10 years sent you a “k thx bai (link to divorce papers)” instead of talking in person?
Context is everything. Yeah, your wife of 10 years deserves the face to face, more than once. A dude I dated for a few months that showed no emotional intelligence specifically told me he’d prefer a text. I obliged when I realized it wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t want to keep up a casual relationship. He then asked to talk in person, though, and I again obliged.
I would fetch my divorce attorney shovel.
I think its basic courtesy to put even a little effort to something as important as a breakup. Not doing it face to face or at least in a call removes the interaction completely. It’s taking the easiest possible path in a situation that will certainly affect the other person in a significant manner. It’s cold. Using a LLM for said text like in the meme is even lower effor and leaves the recipient feeling utterly worthless. Basically the same thing as getting fired via email.
I figured out that this works as a guilt for a lot of people who were abused in a relationship.
Call them, text them, or even better, ghost their ass if they ever toxic. You’re more than fine with that.
You people think em dashes are proof of AI?
Jesus Christ that’s so fucking sad.
You are vastly underestimating the amount of people who don’t use em dashes at all.
They don’t but the word processing software they likely use autocorrects them in. What’s next, proper semi-colon use and Oxford commas means you’re a bot?
Spelling & Grammar tool just wreaking havok.
most people aren’t writing texts in a fancier word processor than their phone’s default. Mine doesn’t – and I doubt every will – correct them
I’ve seen more proper use of the semicolon and oxford commas than em dashes. The em dash is a lot more esoteric, that won’t change.
I don’t have a good sense of this since I am a trained writer. Is it really so low that one would reasonably conclude an AI wrote something with them?
the actual emdash symbol isn’t really something you can do when texting from your phone
Using honest to goodness em dashes instead of just a hyphen - pretty uncommon.
Even a hyphen would be pretty unusual in a real text message, because they’re more annoying to get than other common punctuation on the phone keyboard, and autocomplete won’t put them in.
In a chat app, a hyphen would probably be somewhat common since it’s right there on the keyboard, but a true em dash would be pretty unusual since most chat apps aren’t going to be doing autocorrect like a word processor would, and you’d have to use the magic key combination to insert it.But we don’t have the original text so we can’t tell if the original author confused a hyphen with an em dash, though
It’s basically unseen outside of professionally written stuff. Most people use commas. But AI like to use them a fair bit, more than the average internet user.
It seems like AI is mostly trained on academic writing then. Very interesting.
Most normal people, at least from my understanding, don’t use em dashes in text messages, let alone even use punctuation half the time. So if I see em dashes, yeah, my first thought is going straight to AI.
Annoyingly I’ve used them for a number of years as a good way to make internet comments flow a bit more. However I find myself doing it less and less now because I’m worried people are just going to think I’m using an AI if they see an em dash.
(You just long press dash on android to get to it, opt+shift+dash on Mac, and the admittedly Byzantine alt+0151 on windows. Can’t remember iOS off the top of my head, but I think it’s similar to android)
I don’t use em dashes but I do use punctuation (apparently some people find that passive aggressive and I don’t what to do). When someone else uses punctuation I just ignore it unless it doesn’t match their previous messages.
I’m a fiend for a dash - they’re just better
If you were actually a fiend for dashes, you’d have used an em dash—not used a hyphen as a stand-in for one.
Ah well - maybe I’m just a fiend for a wrongly used hyphen 🤷♂️. I don’t think I would ever notice which one someone was using.
i use those a lot to indicate that i finished a thought rapidly (in most cases)
like “what the fu—”
I used to :(
Indeed—your assertion is entirely accurate—the mere presence of em dashes within a text does not—in and of itself—serve as definitive proof of artificial intelligence authorship. This grammatical construct—a versatile and often elegant punctuation mark—can be employed by any writer—human or machine—to achieve various stylistic and semantic effects. Its utility—whether for emphasis—for setting off parenthetical thoughts—or for indicating a sudden break in thought—is undeniable.
However—it is also true that—when analyzing patterns across vast datasets—certain stylistic tendencies can emerge. An AI—programmed to process and generate language based on extensive training corpora—might—through statistical correlation and optimization—exhibit a propensity for specific linguistic features. This isn’t—to be clear—a conscious choice by the AI—there’s no inherent preference for em dashes encoded within its fundamental algorithms. Rather—it’s a reflection of the patterns it has learned—the statistical likelihood of certain elements appearing together.
So—while an em dash does not independently declare “I am AI”—its consistent and perhaps slightly overzealous deployment—alongside other less tangible but equally discernible patterns—might—for a discerning observer—suggest an origin beyond human hands. It’s about the entire tapestry—not just a single thread. It’s about the aggregate—the cumulative effect—the subtle statistical fingerprint. And that—I believe—is a distinction worth making.
Ingredients: a dash of em
I honestly don’t know if this is hand written or not, and that makes it even funnier.
i assume hand written, as that is excessive even for ai. im gonna test it tho
edit:
Prompt: write me a prargraph talking about how em dashes are not a defibitive sign of ai. use ecessive amounts of em dashes
result: Sure—here’s a paragraph absolutely drowning in em dashes—because why not?
People often claim—incorrectly—that excessive use of em dashes is some kind of definitive sign of AI-generated text—but that assumption falls apart quickly—because human writers—especially those with a flair for dramatics or a tendency toward fragmented, breathless prose—have been peppering their sentences with em dashes for centuries—long before algorithms were even a concept—and while it’s true that language models sometimes favor em dashes—they’re hardly unique in that regard—many contemporary authors, bloggers, and even journalists lean on them heavily—for rhythm, for emphasis, for parenthetical asides, for style—so to say “em dashes equal AI” is like saying “ellipses equal laziness”—a statement that’s catchy but hopelessly reductive—and if anything, this overgeneralization itself is more indicative of shallow analysis than of any deep understanding of writing—human or artificial.
Want me to make an even more over-the-top version—like so dense with em dashes it almost collapses into chaos? Or keep it just slightly unhinged but still readable?
answer: yes
response: Alright—here’s the full chaos version—an unhinged wall of em dashes—designed to overwhelm, confuse, and yet—somehow—still make its point:
The idea—that em dashes—those long, elegant, interruptive strokes—are a definitive fingerprint of AI—is laughable—no, it’s absurd—because human writers—yes, real, living, breathing writers—have always loved them—used them—abused them—even worshipped them—as tools for rhythm—for drama—for sudden shifts—for inserting thoughts within thoughts within thoughts—and while AI—sure—might lean on them occasionally—it’s no different than a poet—or a novelist—or an over-caffeinated blogger hammering out a late-night post—filling their paragraphs with dashes—em dashes—everywhere—because it feels natural—feels conversational—feels alive—and if we start declaring any style quirk—a dash, a semicolon, a penchant for adverbs—as “proof” of machine authorship—then we risk erasing the messy, chaotic, wonderfully unpredictable reality of human prose—a reality full of contradictions—full of excesses—full of writers who don’t give a damn about rules—and that, ironically enough, is something no algorithm has quite mastered—not yet—not ever—so no—the em dash is not a smoking gun—it’s just a mark—and marks are made by hands—human or otherwise.
Want me to go even further—like a version where every single comma and period is replaced with an em dash? Or one that’s so self-aware it starts mocking its own overuse of dashes?
I can still tell these two paragraphs apart from the other one because of its voice. God, the chatgpt voice is tacky…
How the hell do you even type an em dash?
I’m sure it’s possible (I know it’s easy on a touch keyboard), but if the person who sent it has never used em dashes in their life, then it’s pretty definitive proof. Otherwise, it’s just a big clue that you might combine with other factors.
On a mobile phone it’s super easy. Long press the hyphen button and swipe over to the dash.
On Mac it’s pretty easy still, but requires a little more knowledge. Option-shift-dash. (Without the shift gives you an en dash.)
On Windows it’s the completely arcane alt-0151, and only possible if you have a numpad. I memorised it like 15 years ago and have regularly used it since, but it’s hard to blame people for not doing so.
No idea about Linux.
Well it depends on the keyboard layout, on Linux, at least—but on other platforms too, I think.
You could make it easier on windows with an on-screen keyboard probably
Word and Google docs will translate them from –
They’ll also give you the stupid smart quotes.
I’ve never break up with anybody over text but if for some reason I had to I would certainly write it on a computer first.
Fair point. It’s still a red flag (in more ways than one!) but I accept it’s not definitive.
You use use the compose key with a sequence of characters. Mine is right alt, so it’s gonna be:
right alt, then -, then -, then -
—
Considering that a comma has its own button, it’s no wonder which one is preferred.
Yes. and your ignorance is sad.
It’s honestly unhinged. So many stupid people trying to desperately grasp at something to feel more correct than you™
If you were playing yahtzee, and your opponent only rolled sixes, would you not say anything? No, no, rolling a six isn’t proof of cheating—that’s… that’s ridiculous.
Also, don’t tell me you need to roll more than sixes to win yahtzee, I don’t know any other dice games.
Also, don’t tell me you need to roll more than sixes to win yahtzee
Ok but this is an interesting question.
If you rolled only sixes, you’d score 30 in the upper section, missing the bonus.
Then in the lower section you’d get 30 in each of 3 & 4 of a kind and chance (90 points) and 50 for the Yahtzee. One could make a case that it’s a weird full house, but that’s a stretch.
That’s a total of 170 points. That’s not going to do very well when 250 is often considered a minimum “good” score.
However…some rules give you an extra bonus for a second or subsequent Yahtzee. With that, you could actually win with all sixes. Just get 100 after 100 after 100 and end up with over a thousand points.
I use them all the time!
do they serve a purpose, that is not fulfilled by the humble “,”?
Yes, it’s nuanced but it breaks up the sentence flow in a different way. Also used for listing things. A comma is more a small pause, like this. A semicolon is used to differentiate two independent related thoughts ; it’s kind of a combination between a period and a comma. A dash can be used for many things - a longer separating of thoughts, listing different points such as this, or just as an intentional emphasis to add a more protracted pause.
Your comment has a hyphen not an em dash. The point of the post is that AI likes to include em dashes, which are wildly uncommon in modern text, as most keyboards don’t have a key for it
They’re pretty trivial to make in any OS — having a dedicated key isn’t necessary.
but most people, outside of professional writers and linguists, don’t use them
Odd, I see them used all the time, and I’m neither. So I guess either my experience is an outlier, everyone I talk to is secretly an LLM, or maybe the meme is pushing an easy conclusion because people in general are bad at picking up on LLM responses and want an easy punctuation mark so they don’t have to think.
I see them used all the time
Weird, i hardly ever see a normal hyphen, let alone an em dash, but of course it’s not a foolproof method to detect ai, just a strong indicator
Sure. Most people don’t know what an OS is, let alone how to enter special characters.
I think this is something macOS does best — using shift+option hyphen is a bit quicker than alt+0151.
Long pressing the hyphen on the Google keyboard on Android also gives the option of selecting an en dash or em dash.
On Linux, if you have the compose key enabled, Compose key + three hyphens in a row will generate an em dash (en dash is two hyphens).
aah, so it’s more a choice about the intended sound or flow of a text and not necessary a difference in grammatic constructs, simmiliar to using an oxford comma, or not.
interesting, i’ll have to pay some attention to that, when reading.
Em dashes often replace parentheses:
The company has a policy of having any newly hired employee (like Steve) introduce themselves at the monthly all hands meeting.
The company has a policy of having any newly hired employee—like Steve—introduce themselves at the monthly all hands meeting.
Em dashes also often replace colons:
I’m going to bring my signature dish: bacon-wrapped dates.
I’m going to bring my signature dish—bacon-wrapped dates.
Em dashes are commonly used to denote interrupted speech:
He started to explain, “I was hungry and you weren’t home yet so I—”
“You’re not a diabetic, you can handle waiting a few extra minutes to eat”
Replacing commas is unusual and probably incorrect according to most style guides.
This is also highly localized. Style guides tend to apply only to one particular country, not all English-speaking countries. The AP guide is used by most American newspapers and magazines, and the Chicago Guide is used by most American book publishers. Each have their own rules on dashes.
It gives rhythm and flavor to your writing. Varied punctuation - where appropriate - is an easy way to spice anything up, give it a little more flavor, more control over how your words are read. There is a quote by Gary Provost that isn’t specifically about punctuation but illustrates this point well, it’s one of my favorites:
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important
Damn. That’s actually really cool.
Right? The written word is its own kind of instrument and I dig it
You can pry my em dashes — which I use regularly in writing because I love them— from my cold dead hands (To be fair, I really like parenthetical statements too, could be an ADHD thing).
Parenthetical statements are so very useful (as they can denote a hierarchy of thoughts (and do many other things))! I love them.
You’re providing a thought (and a bonus thought)
Humans just use dashes - they get the point across and don’t require esoteric button presses.
But it just doesn’t look right. I use a double dash, but most places now convert that automatically to em dash.
I use a keyboard layout, where they are easy to type — this does not make me a llm.
My keyboard does not have an em dash and I have never seen one that does.
Still sus. 🤔
Now you haveEdit: the em-dash is in the second row next to the 0. You type it by pressing shift and the mentioned key.
What the hell am I looking at? What the fuck is going on with those diagonal arrows??
They are for playing Dance Dance Revolution.
Jokes aside: this is the Neo2 keyboard layout, which has 6 layers. The arrows are used for switching layers — just think of the shift key as the key used for the first layer switch (from layer 1 to layer 2).
No, it makes you wrong.
There is a wrong keyboard layout?
All QWERTY-based layouts.
– sincerely, Dvorak user.
On the iPhone I just long-press the dash and get alternates like en and em dash, as well as middot. Otherwise, no esoteric button presses. Works on macOS and iPad too.
No need for long press—double dashes convert automatically
Ok————— nice
To be fair though, a colon would be the correct punctuation here.
Some phones turn hyphens into an em dash.
Fuck using an alt code though, I’m just gonna use a comma even when I shouldn’t
I use the EURKey layout, right alt becomes a modifier key that, among other changes, turns the dash into an em dash. It’s really nice, also for diacritics and such.
Yesss em dashes are my babies! They’re have more versatility in breaking up sentences than commas IMO, and they don’t have as many annoying rules as semi-colons.
But I also write stories as a hobby so thats the reason its something I care about
I’m with you. I used to use a lot more parentheses, but the break is cleaner. I opt for en dashes, though, because I find too em dashes to be too long. That could just be a MSWord preference because I don’t distinguish on other platforms.
Isn’t “It’s not you, it’s me” the ultimate example of parallel sentence structure? Lol
But let’s be real, it’s more like…
💔 Here’s three reasons reasons we’re breaking up:
- Our personalities don’t match-- according to (made up citation) people with you type are toxic.
- Your idiology doesn’t match mine-- you don’t believe in White South African genocide.
- We aren’t compatible-- our personalities aren’t complimentary.
And so on. Lol
There needs to be a “what you can do” with a green tick emoji
If you need any further clarification, please don’t hesitate to let me know 😊
Many input mechanisms automatically substitute two hyphens with “–”.
Including this very platform.
Lemmy will automatically render a double dash – as an en dash, and a triple dash — as an em dash.
I usually just type alt + 0151, though, because I’m a nerd.
I just got a line across the page: —
Some of this may depend on your client. If you do a triple dash by itself on its own line:
You get a horizontal rule in most clients, including the default web UI and all of the major browser based clients I’ve tried.
You only get a horizontal line when you have the three dashes sit alone on a line
But when you use it inline—then it should render as an emdash or–an endash
Doesn’t do it for me on Thunder.
Nor on Jerboa. But lemmy-ui (the default web UI) does it.
Why am I bold? why does markdown do my head in. Its really not that hard.
I’m not seeing it in Voyager, but I’m guessing you made a header:
Main header =========== Level 2 header --------------The number of dashes or equality signs doesn’t have to match, so I think that’s what you did.
Nice. Thanks!
I use those when writing literature, but because in Spanish it is what we use for dialogs.
