En dash either, apparently.

I have mixed feelings about the liberation but am glad that there are at least two of us.

I have a Compose key binding in https://github.com/kragen/xcompose which maps Compose Space Minus to "—" with two thin spaces on each side of it, because I prefer the spaces. But HN rewrites the thin spaces to regular spaces, so on HN I just use "—" without the spaces, the way ChatGPT does, which is Compose Minus Minus Minus, and is in the standard Compose key bindings (if you map your keyboard to have a Compose key at all).

Examples within the last week include https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44996702, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44989129, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44991769, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44989444. I typed all of those.

I never use space-hyphen-space instead of an em dash. I do sometimes use TeX's " --- ".

Macs and iDevices have been auto-transforming -- into – for well over a decade now, and on the iOS standard keyboard both – and — are just a single long press of the dash key away.

I would write it with Option-shift-hyphon when I used macOS.

On Linux, I use Compose-hyphen-hyphen-hyphen.

I don't use it as often as I used to; but when I was younger, I was enough of a nerd to use it in my writing all the time. And yes, always careful to use it correctly, and not confuse it with an en-dash. Also used to write out proper balanced curly quotes on macOS, before it was done automatically in many places.

I always used to google search "emdash unicode" and copy-paste the character, but I guess now I'll save several minutes from my essay-writing by switching to the lazy single-dash typology that I don't like the look of. Soon I'm going to have to start throwing in speling errors and other things too.

A mobile keyboard—limited as it is—has no trouble producing an em-dash, requiring little more than a long press on the - button.

> That's because most keyboards don't have an emdash key, and few people even know how to produce an actual emdash.

There’s a subculture effect: this has been trivial on Apple devices for a long time—I’m pretty sure I learned the Shift-Option-hyphen shortcut in the 90s, long before iOS introduced the long-press shortcut—and that’s also been a world disproportionately popular with the kind of people who care about this kind of detail. If you spend time in communities with designers, writers, etc. your sense of what’s common is wildly off the average.

I’ve used “real” em-dashes and en-dashes in my writing generally since I switched to using Macs about 20 years ago. Before that I used them for e.g. academic writing, which I mainly did in LaTeX, but not so often elsewhere.

They’re simple enough key combinations (on a Mac) that I wouldn’t be surprised if I guessed them. I certainly find it confusing to imagine someone who has to write professionally or academically not working out how to type them for those purposes at least.

> Genuine question, do you actually use the formal emdash in your writing?

"the formal emdash"?

> AIs are very consistent about using the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it

Setting an em-dash closed is separate from whether you using an em-dash (and an em-dash is exactly what it says, a dash that is the width of the em-width of the font; "double long" is fine, I guess, if you consider the en-dash "single long", but not if, as you seem to be, you take the standard width as that of the ASCII hyphen-minus, which is usually considerably narrower than en width in a proportional font.)

But, yes, most people who intentionally use em-dashes are doing so because they care about detail enough that they are also going to set them closed, at least in the uses where that is standards. (There are uses where it is conventional to set them half-closed, but that's not important here.)

> whereas humans almost always tend to use a slang version - a single dash with spaces around it.

That's not an em-dash (and its not even an approximation of one, using a hyphen-minus set open—possibly doubled—is an approximation of the typographic convention of using an en-dash set open – different style guides prefer that for certain uses for which other guides prefer an em-dash set closed.) But I disagree with your claim that "most humans" who describe themselves as using em-dashes instead are actually just approximating the use of en-dashes set open with the easier-to-type hyphen-minus.

I actually use the em dash. I learned it from Butterick’s practical typography years ago.

https://practicaltypography.com/hyphens-and-dashes.html

Most people probably don't. I'm an editor who's been working in print for years, so the keyboard shortcut for an em dash is muscle memory for me at this point. I have always been a Chicago Manual of Style person, so I don't place spaces around the em dash. AP style guide users do place a space around it.

I learned the keyboard shortcut so I can type the proper thing. I did the same for the ellipsis.

Also, phone keyboards make it easy. Just hold down the - and you can select various types.

I will use a double hyphen: -- which Microsoft Word and I think most word processors I've used will auto-replace with an em dash. I will sometimes even type the double hyphen to represent an em dash in places where it doesn't get replaced, like internet comments. I'm kind of surprised more people don't use two hyphens as em dash shorthand, to be honest.

I have --- set to autocorrect to —. I've been using it in formal writing for 30 years. When we were in high school, we had a "Dash Party" in English class, where we ate Twinkies and learned about the different dashes.

I would argue that LLMs overuse the emdash more because they overuse specific rhetorical devices, e.g. antithesis, than because they are being too correct about punctuation.

> Genuine question, do you actually use the formal emdash in your writing?

I’m not the person you asked, but I do.

> the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it

The spaces around it depend on style guide, it is not universal that they should not exist.

> That's because most keyboards don't have an emdash key

Nor do they have keys for proper quotes and apostrophes or interrobangs, yet it doesn’t stop people from using them. The keys don’t need to exist.

> That's what makes it such a good giveaway.

It’s not. It might be one signal but it is far from sufficient.

> I'm happy to be told that I'm wrong, and that you do actually use the proper double long dash in your writing

I do use the proper em-dash in my writing—and many other characters too—and my HN history is ample proof. I explained at length in another comment how I insert the characters, plus how simple it is if you use any Apple OS.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45003650

Nah, I've been using them correctly for years. My preference for them came by way of reading a lot in generally, but especially from Salinger.

I do them without surrounding spaces, because that's... how you're supposed to use them, and it's also less typing.

They also used to be a really good Shibboleth to tell if someone was using a Mac—the key combo on there is easy, and also easy to remember, so Mac users were far more likely than the median to employ em-dashes. It wasn't a sure tell, but it was pretty reliable.

I use en dash with two spaces and have done so before AI. But my comments here are from after GPT 4 released, so I guess I can't prove I didn't use AI to write them, although I don't think any AIs use that style. Here is one from February 2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39386480. I don't like how "-" looks, it just looks like a minus sign and too short.

I've had an Autohotkey replacement for the proper em dash character for over 10 years, using shorthand characters which triggers the replacement. Whether spaces are around the dash is a difference in style (see: various publications' style guides), though I use the no spaces style.

Being able to insert self-interjections and such with the correct character would undoubtedly be more widespread if it were more accessible to insert for most.

I for one, use an actual em dash in my writing—or at least I used to. Option + Shift + the hyphen key on Mac. I never knew if I was using it correctly, but I'd learn to copy how I'd seen it used in books and articles and things. Now, I have an incessant paranoia around using it.

if very few humans use it, how did AI learn to use it since it was trained on mostly human writing?

Option + shift + hyphen or hold hyphen on any Mac or iPhone to get an em dash. I use them very frequently, because they're the correct character for the use case.

I did as well, yes. It was an easy keyboard shortcut on Macs. For many, many years.

No longer. Just like you can no longer bold key phrases, you can no longer use emdashes if your writing being ID'd as "AI" is important (or not).

I've been using the proper emdash for a very long time.

on Macintosh: option+shift+-

on Linux: compose - - -

It's just Option + dash. Using option as a modifier is second nature if you ever write other than English and need, eg, é or ñ or something.

Yes, that's been my take too. But apparently some phones, like iphones, will convert '--' to emdash.

Yes. Others have pointed out the shortcuts in iOS and macOS. For Windows—I have Alt-0151 in muscle memory.

I write fiction and use proper em-dashes all the time in long form writing. It's option + - on macOS.

> I'm happy to be told that I'm wrong

I've found that people who say this sort of thing rarely change their beliefs, even after being given evidence that they are wrong. The fact is, as numerous people have pointed out, Word and other editors/word processors change '--' to an em-dash. And the "slang version" of an em-dash is "I went to work--but forgot to put on pants", not "I went to work - but forgot to put on pants".

BTW, "humans almost always tend to use" is very poor writing--pick one or the other between "almost always" and "tend to". It wouldn't be a bad thing if LLMs helped increase human literacy, so I don't know why people are so gung ho on identifying AI output based on utterly non-substantive markers like em-dashes. Having an LLM do homework is a bad thing, but that's not what we're talking about. And someone foolishly using the presence of em-dashes to detect LLM output will utterly fail against someone using an editor macro to replace em-dashes with the gawdawful ' - '.

I type em dashes as double hyphens. Sometimes the software resolves them to a true em dash, but sometimes not.

I never use hyphens where em dashes would be correct.

I do have issues determining when a two-word phrase should or shouldn't be hyphenated. It surely doesn't help that I grew up in a bilingual English/German household, so that my first instinct is often to reject either option, and fully concatenate the two words instead.

(Whether that last comma is appropriate opens a whole other set of punctuation issues ... and yes, I do tend to deliberately misuse ellipses for effect.)

I use \-- and \--- in LaTeX, without the backslash.

[dead]

So you're the ones who have been training the robots.

Indeed!

https://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=dang&next=33807246#...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27787448

I often edit things in Word — I have a document that I can alt-tab to and type things. It has spellcheck, etc. that my browser window does not, and I’m not at risk of losing if I refresh or something. Then copy-paste back.

Word converts any - into an em dash based on context. Guess who’s always accused of being a bot?

The thing is, AI learned to use these things because it is good typographical style represented in its training set.

My workaround (well, to be honest, I've always done this: I love a good em dash, they're terrifically satisfying to use, but I'm too lazy to type them), is to use two single dashes--like so.

It's not a suspicion in an also otherwise properly typeset PDF, but it's a suspicion in a YouTube comment or other informal context for sure.

Dammit -- I use my dashes all the time (though always double them like here). I hope AI didn't ruin this for me.

(I learned to use dashes like this from Philip Dick's writings, of all places, and it stuck. Bet nobody ever thought of looking for writing style in PKD!).

Good. It's a crutch for poorly composed sentences or for prose intending to imitate the affect of poorly composed sentences. There's not a single sentence under the sun that needs an emdash. Commas and parentheses can do it all, and an excess of either is a sign of poorly edited prose.

I don't buy the pro-clanker pro-em dash movement that has come out of nowhere in the past several years.

I and many others do. It's common in formal writing such as academic papers. It's also the most agreed upon correct use of em dash.

You're making the point that OP never actually uses the em dash, by surveying their HN comments, in order to defend the notion that no one actually used em dashes prior to their proliferation by LLMs? Or do you mean something else?

Haha yep. I never saw a single person use these in internet comments pre-2023. Plenty of hyphens to simulate it - like this - but not actual em dashes. No matter how many people swear up and down that they're so important.

Use of spell check is a net positive but it has led to some widespread errors, like people (and widely read publications) misspelling "led" as "lead" (pet peeve).

But yes, it's absurd to complain about LLMs resulting in increased literacy.

Do you really not know any hopeless nerds? What are you doing on HN?

So any iOS device (maybe macOS input too? Idk), or any software meant for word editing, like say MS Word?

I think it’s the nerds who don’t use these things…

You don't want to believe people use em dashes? Why is that?

> By 2035 any language above a first grade reading level will be grounds for AI suspicion.

Probably 5th grade, but your comment is directionally correct.

By 2035 we will live in the world full of TikTok videos where ability to write will be absurd to people as Not Sure in Idiocracy… this is hyperbole, ofc… but you know what I want to say.

> Whenever there are commonly agreed upon and known tell-tale signs of AI writing

It's been two years now since such commonly agreed upon signs appeared yet by and large they're still just as present to this day.

I’m curious about this (I’m not a native speaker). What alternative would you use when you want to emphasize a cause-effect relationship, in an engineering context for example?

“Most times A happens before B, but this order it’s not guaranteed. Therefore, there is a possibility of {whatever}.”

Alternatives that come to mind are “as a consequence”, “as a result”, “this means that”, but those are all more verbose, not less.

A simple “so” could work, but it would make the sentence longer, and the cause-effect relationship is less explicit I think.

Therefore isn't empty verbiage. It's just communication, it's a conjunctive adverb. Therefore implies causation or at least some connection between clauses.

I could see arguing that starting a sentence or paragraph with "Therefore, " repeatedly in one essay is empty but tbh your teacher just sounds jaded.

English class is about as relevant to the average office worker's professional communication as art class is to a professional paint crew.

It has been banned in pre-AI style manuals.

They didn't simply rephrase it, they delved into it a bit.

scoff It's evident that Gandalf clearly used AI. Saruman is the real human here.

Jokes aside, I don't like what LLMs are doing to our culture, but I'm curious about the future.

Thank you! I remember the movies almost word-for-word, but I don't have a copy of the books anymore (I should fix that!)

Provided by Palantir?

It's funny, because it was the "em-dashes mean AI" thing that finally reminded me to deal with the fact that the extension that I had been using for typographical dashes (and other things) on desktop browsing (the main place I used them on my desktop) had been broken for a while and get around to adding keyboard shortcuts instead.

Big Michael Bolton energy.

Funnily enough, I was using the word superlative more as an adjective, than the noun that refers to the part of grammer (adjective), if that makes sense.

And, if you want to have some fun, you could give it your writing sample - but say that it's from a random blog post you found online. See what it tells you on that.

It really is a shame that an average user loves being glazed so much. Professional RLHF evaluators are a bit better about this kind of thing, but the moment you begin to funnel in-the-wild thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback from the real users into your training pipeline is the moment you invite disaster.

By now, all major AI models are affected by this "sycophancy disease" to a noticeable degree. And OpenAI appears to have rolled back some of the anti-sycophancy features in GPT-5 after 4o users started experiencing "sycophancy withdrawal".

That assumes the characterization is perceived as flattering, or that enough data on me would allow it to "think" it would be to me. Generally, given the anti-intellectual bias in American popular culture, I'm on the fence about that. But then, what are the biases of the corpus ChatGPT was trained on?

For context, I was asking GPT to rewrite some passage in the style of various authors, like Hemingway or Waugh. I didn't even ask it for an assessment of my writing; I was given that for free.

In retrospect (this was while ago), I think the passage may have been expository in character, so perhaps it is not much a mystery why it was characterized as "academic". (When I give it samples similar to mine now, I get "formal, academic, and analytical tone". Compare this to how it characterizes an article from The Register as written in an "informal and conversational tone", in part because of the "colloquial jargon" and "pop culture references"). So my RP comparison is sensible. And there's the question of social class as well. I don't exactly speak like a construction workers, as it were.

> So, yeah, if your target audience are the people who take those "AI tells" seriously and negatively react to them, definitely craft your writing to that audience. But also, consider if that is really your target audience

Nowadays if you write anything you only have two audiences

The first audience is people who care what you are saying

The second audience is AI scrapers

People who do not care what you have to say will have an AI summarize it for them, so they aren't your audience

It's one of the few books that I went into totally blind, and then hate-finished just so that I could confidently condemn it.

I've deleted a paragraph or two to avoid unilaterally taking everything too off topic, but I'll just say that the book is a self-contradictory artifact of hypocrisy that disrespects the reader.

There’s an even more boring book?!

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/elon-...

They have a right to chant against their former enslavers. Claiming that chant amounts to genocide is a ludicrous white supremacist conspiracy theory repeated solely by neo-Nazis, intended to prop up a brutal system of apartheid as an ideal to go back to.

Definitely a bad example. In spoken speech, yes. In writing I’ve never seen that. German tells in writing are more subtle like word choice — the German language has many cognates with English that are common in German but have fallen into disuse in English as they’ve been replaced with Latin-root alternatives.

They do. I read posts on a support forum with a lot of German users, and it’s very common to see an “ist” marooned in the middle of an English sentence. Muscle memory takes over sometimes.

I agree, the GP should at the end of the sentence the second verb insert.

I asked Gemini flash for a 200-word paragraph on a random topic, which most people would confidently classify as LLM-generated. It produced a verbose, big-worded, third-person slop about the concept of time that IMO fulfilled my prompt (although a phillosopher firnd of mine would be a strong contestant).

> The concept of "time" is a multifaceted and complex topic that has captivated philosophers, physicists, and everyday individuals for centuries. From a scientific perspective, time can be understood as the fourth dimension of spacetime, inextricably linked with the three spatial dimensions. This notion, introduced by Einstein's theory of relativity, posits that the flow of time is not constant but can be influenced by gravity and velocity. In a more quotidian context, time is a framework for organizing events and measuring duration, allowing for the structuring of daily life and historical records. It is a fundamental element in every human endeavor, from a scheduled meeting to the progression of a civilization. The subjective experience of time, however, is a fascinating aspect, as it can feel as if it is speeding up or slowing down depending on our emotional state or the nature of our activities. This divergence between objective and subjective time highlights its elusive and deeply personal character.

I asked it to add three spelling mistakes, then to make it so most people would confidently classiffy it as human writing, and it changed to first-person and small words.

> Time is a super weird concept when you really think about it, right? It's like, one minute you're just chillin', and the next, a whole day's gone by. They say it's the fourth dimention, which is a wild idea on its own, but honestly, it feels more personal than that. Your experiance of time can totally change depending on what you're doing. A boring meeting can feel like it lasts forever, while a fun night with friends flies by in a flash. That huge diverence between how we feel time and how it actually works is what makes it so fascinating and kind of confusing all at once.

It has the three misspellings, and if the topic was more casual, It could fool me indeed. Maybe I should have asked for spelling mistakes commonly made by Spanish speakers.

Wouldn't surprise me if that's true. I just treat any AI-smelling content as an information hazard that is _at best_ providing no useful entropy and stop reading it. Something about it is just so repulsive.

Yeah, that's human nature.

Maybe I skimmed the article and didn't look for specifics enough, because I did not see a bias towards any level of education. But of course I am biased myself, probably using all the fancy words and still making grammatical errors like a fifth grader, and iirc I did not have a native American coworker (aka people with whom I regularly talk and not just write) for 10 years, only other ESLs and some British people.

Kimi tends to be very.. casual from my usage, like informal millenial style, without being prompted to do so.