I used to be an em-dash user, but now my opinion is that I’d rather be perceived as someone who does not want to be confused with an LLM. So I’ve changed my writing style.
My feeling is that my writing doesn't sound anything like an LLM, so if someone thinks I'm an LLM because I used an em-dash, that's on them. That, or I royally screwed up and need to do a better job as a writer. At least with today's LLMs.
The false positive rate for assuming em-dashers are AI is probably very low right now. I doubt whatever you write is valuable enough to justify the extra time and mental effort of figuring out if something is AI or not.
Internet slang like "lol" came from trying to text on those shitty number pads on old cellphones. I expect similar slang will come about in the future from humans trying to prove they're not a dirty clanker. Sacrificing the em-dash is just the beginning of this. Soon, we're all going to be typing without rhythm.
I don’t give a flying fuck what people think. Most colleges copied or adopted my (for a few semesters) school’s style guide, so LLMs are essentially copying me, and I won’t change my punctuation usage because they suck.
But people at work who are copying responses from LLMs into emails to others also suck, and I want to distance myself from them as much as possible. I'm kinda hoping we will eventually have a wave of "what the fuck are we paying you for if you're just copying stuff from an LLM to Slack" firings.
This is a pointless and infinitely losing arms race. LLMs will learn to use hyphens instead of em dashes, and so what? You’re going to start using em dashes again?
At this point, I believe the LLM "style" is on purpose. Perhaps the labs want to be able to distinguish their slop from human content for future training; I don't know. But it feels very deliberate that they've kept the style so consistent for so long.
I agree. They're voluntarily adding fingerprints to images so I expect the default voice is intentional and it wouldn't surprise me at all (though I have no evidence of this) if the output text has a fingerprint stenographically embedded in it.
In a video of Hank Green, he interviewed an AI expert (if there even is such a thing), and he said that in the thinking part of the conversation, LLMs seems to use code language to communicate with itself, like in the usage and ordering of words, and such.
I think that there could be even more then a fingerprint in those messages.
I'll take this opportunity to repeat that the natural language interpretation of thinking traces don't appear to be "real" by any reasonable definition. Even if they can at times be useful (at least seemingly). There's research demonstrating the usage of arbitrary symbols, even just repeating a single symbol, leading to a similar improvement in ability. This makes sense if you consider how the attention mechanism and KV cache work as the sequence iteratively grows.
Basically we optimize the models to produce output with certain characteristics but that doesn't mean that what we see is the whole truth or even that the relationships in the underlying system are structured in the way that we might expect.
He’s not an expert in anybody’s estimation other than his own. He’s a blogger, tech booster, executive, SEO guy, etc. He was big into NFTs. He gloms onto every buzzy tech thing because squeezing all the “gee whiz” he can out of tech optimism is that guy’s career. He has no education in ML or anything related.
Ok— I don’t give a flying fuck if people jump to the conclusion that I am an LLM. And that concludes my willingness to engage in those pedantic semantic antics.
Sure— I don’t do any professional writing at this point, so my stakes are a lot lower. If I work in a field where people care about what I write, again, then maybe I will. Complete sentences are often seen as unforgivably inefficient in my current position.
Shakespeare was written for the masses. Hence being full of dick jokes.
Similar story for Chaucer, and so many others. I don't think good writing, things we appreciate so much it lasts generations, has much to do with signalling education or class.
> The purpose of good writing style has always been to signal education and class
Sure, that’s why there have never been any authors that became famous despite being poor and deliberately writing with that affect.
Good writing style does connote good education, and in environments where being upper-class bolsters social standing, some people flaunt it to signify class, as they would with any other wealth signifier, like expansive shoes.
I am a union tradesman— the third generation to work in manufacturing in this area. Affecting an upper-class identity diminishes social standing in my environment. Having a lot of money, definitely doesn’t. My dirty work boots probably cost as much as many of the trendiest shoes on the market, and the guys at work know that and admire them… but my wearing them doesn’t signify class. Similarly, you can use good writing style in a way that shows you went to a good school and paid attention without wearing it like a Harvard Business School fleece.
They're just so handy! I do think LLMs tend to use them in a specific way, though.
So maybe tweaking your usage (ex. no spaces around them) or using a technically incorrect en-dash might offer the desired effect while subtly signaling that your message isn't AI-generated.
I still use them — mostly for pauses — but I'd like to think my voice sounds distinct enough from an AI that people can tell.
I've only ever been using "regular" dash, a minus, for that. How do you even type yours? If I ever needed differently-sized dashes (and I don't know the difference between them) I always used wiki to copy them.
(disclaimer: I feel like this obsession with dashes is special to native English speakers, which I'm obviously not)
silly specific: the minus sign is a separate character. The dash equivalent is the en dash (–), versus the larger em (—) and smaller hyphen (-).
The en dash is also used in things like scores (3–2 Turkey), votes (the bill passed 58–42), or connecting words where the second part is longer than one word (the Australia–New Zealand alliance.) You can remember the latter as, "a hyphen isn't big and strong enough to hold on to more than one word.
If you're on a mac, pressing Option+- is the en dash and Option+Shift+- is the em dash.
My first language is Dutch (Flemish). I didn’t even know there were three different dashes. The em dash is something I didn’t know exist, or were used, until llms came about. The hyphen is something we use when we make a list, that’s just the minus symbol right?
So em dashes are for pauses or highlighting things I guess?
The en dash you explained in your reaction.
Is there any other use for the hyphen except for making lists?
Only a small subset of native english speakers. Most don't use dashes at all, of those that do most just use minus for everything, some exceedingly small group cares about typographical details and thus distinguishes the different sorts of dashes.
It's an attention to detail thing that you'd definitely want to get right in a physical textbook or the like.
Depends on your OS. Mac is the easiest, it's just ---, Linux depends on your distro, if it uses KDE, it's <right-win>--- —. Windows is a little awkward, I think you need <right win>+the code point.
It’s an obsession with literature and/or typography nerds specifically.
Option-shift-hyphen types an em-dash, option-hyphen an en-dash. You can also hold the hyphen key (on a Mac or iPhone) and it will allow you to select either. Em dashes are used—like—this—as something spiritually akin to a parenthetical. En-dashes are used within ranges: Feb 14–17.
I for one am striving for clarity and couldn't care less about being confused with AI.
However I've only ever used regular dashes. How do you type an em-dash? Is it OS specific? I've taken to using Emacs insert-char with a list of frequently used ones in my scratch buffer. My memory for Unicode is unreliable.
Keyboard layout specific. Macs with their default English layout use “option-shift-dash” which is really easy to remember (and relatively discoverable, as such things go) which is why using proper m-dashes (not just double-dashes) used to be a strong indicator a poster was using a Mac, before LLMs took the character over.
On iOS you type it by pressing dash and holding until alternative options come up, same way you type e.g. accented characters.
Macs have two possible ways. If you have key repeat enabled, option+shift+dash. Some newer Mac users may have the mode on where holding a key pops up an iOS-style bubble of alternate options, in which case they will just hold hyphen.
In emacs, c-x 8 RET prompts you for unicode character names (or hex) so for rare use you can just spell it out. There's also C-x 8 _ m for em dash and C-x 8 _ n for en dash. (Hit c-x 8 c-h to get a full list of those bindings, like any normal secondary map - they're about as idiosyncratic as the XCompose bindings, but you might find some of them "stick" in your head better (I personally like "C-x 8 1 / 2" better than "Compose 1 2" even if it's a lot more typing...)
Ooh, thanks! I blindly type c-x 8 RET, then finding myself stumbling through 9 different entries for Phi, but I hadn't explored the prefixes. I just realized I could create a custom which-key entry-point with my favorites in a prefix.
Also just learned about compose key apparently, and I noticed that I can program this split keyboard I'm using to turn that into a chord, anywhere!
Then an LLM told me that I can 3D print my own custom keyboard with 32 programmable layers. Everything is an infinite rabbit hole these days, how wild.
Macs have a native way to do dashes: option- hyphen for en-dash and option shift hyphen for em-dash. On Windows there are some application-specific ways that make sense, e.g. in Office, but outside that you’re on your own and have to use the “hold alt and type the character codes” method! Or charmap.
I'm a secret invisible ­ soft hypenator. I like to break words in whacky places that change their meaning only when they need to be broken. Like Democ­rats.
What is the typical motivation to start using em-dashes?
Why go the extra way to have a slightly elongated dash when a normal one would just as well do the job?
I might be conpletely off here but I've never seen a situation where using a normal dash where a long one should be causes any sort of syntactic trouble.
It looks aesthetically nicer. It was also a bit of a signal that someone took pride in their work and so helped that way. It's a bit like whether your tradesperson cleans up after themselves. Technically sweeping up the dust after installing a kitchen cabinet doesn't actually mean anything for the quality of the kitchen cabinet installation, but in practice putting the effort into the presentation correlates with putting the effort into the actual work.
I understand the sentiment with the tradesman example. I would argue that there are a multitude of ways to care about or take pride in one's trade and emdashing the floor is just one of them.
I think people who care about correctness and also read a lot automatically see the difference and it seems (and is) technically incorrect to use a hyphen where an em dash belongs. That’s really it. Kind of like you wouldn’t just leave out the apostrophes in your writing even though in most contexts they are not strictly necessary for comprehension.
Leaving out apostrophes isn't the same though, is it? If you leave out apostrophes you have syntactic effects while a (sortof)dash is still sort of a dash?
Its not exactly the same, of course, but its pretty analogous. It’s a minor, technically incorrect change that doesnt change meaning or understandability most of the time. Ive left out a bunch of apostrophes in this paragraph and Im pretty sure nobody will have a hard time understanding any of it. Yet it would bug me to actually write like this.
I don't know how this works nowadays but when I got taught to write (the pencil and paper kind) and specifically when I got taught syntax, it was "if you want to introduce a clause that explains or expands upon something that precedes it, you draw a small horizontal line" no mention of special chars, Unicode or whatsoever. So why is it so special other than being authors fancy?
i mean why use punctuation or any capitals at all, why not just blast words out in a stream of consciousness so readers know how yr thinking why even bother with speeling things write
Just because you don't care to use the proper dash doesn't mean everyone else doesn't. People have different levels of caring about different details. For the sticklers, there's even a special code point for ellipsis, … rather than .... (Four being correct, as one is to end the sentence.) Personally I'll just skip — entirely unless I'm in a trolling mood, though “sometimes” the right quotes are worth using. Special characters are easy to type on a phone soft keyboard, taking a long press on the relevant key, or if you're using any other advanced input system, so they shouldn't really be considered to be the mark of LLM input.
The real trouble is that people doing engage with the substance of the post anymore, and just shallowly dismiss a post as being vibe written, as if that makes any points raised invalid. Anti-intellectualism's always been cool among a certain crowd. Shame to see it spread but ah well, the propaganda's working.
I had to look up why this exists, and apparently it was added in Unicode 6.1 (2012) because some style guide required it, and using consecutive U+2014 em dashes isn't sufficient because that might not render as one continuous line.
I'm still waiting for the interrabang to become compromised as well. They've already taken my em dash, and my use of the Oxford command, apparently, is an insant flag.
The thing is, in lots of contexts you cant easily type em dashes.
Google docs will convert “—-“ to an emdash but simple text inputs wont.
So when you see one in that context you have to consider the explanation. They copy pasted an em dash specifically, they drafted in Google docs, they know the unicode keyboard shortcut, etc. None of these are safe assumptions. And if it’s markdown you know it wasnt drafted in Google docs.
To me em dashes have always just been an annoyance. For example, Word and OneNote were (and likely still are) very keen on converting every dash to an em-dash by default, and I frequently find myself needing to immediately undo that.
The question is whether the m-dashes are surrounded by spaces or not. The spaces are utterly maddening. But yeah, RIP the mdash, who would have thought.
