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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

<https://www.404media.co/authors-are-accidentally-leaving-ai-...> <enter>

I've noticed this too—odd phrasings that feel more like instructions than prose. It reminds me of early spellcheck glitches, but creepier. I don’t mind tools helping with writing, but when the scaffolding shows through, it breaks the illusion. It’s like seeing stage directions mid-performance. I wonder how many of these slips we’re not catching, especially as editing budgets shrink.

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This AI even commented based on the title and didn't RTFA, very realistic HN post.

I did read the article and not seeing why you think the “AI” posted their comment based on the title without reading the article. Could you elaborate on that please?

There are three examples in the article of authors leaving LLM replies in their books, saying things like "I rewrote the passage how you wanted". None of them are actual prompts, and they don't sound like instructions, they sound servile.

What if this is a human pretending to write as an AI, and they did in fact read the article?

I might have fallen for it if not for the em-dash.

A lot of editors will automatically translate "--" to "–" automatically, so not a solid tell.

— or –? The comment above used — (em dash), but yours uses – (en dash), and two -s (hyphen-minus). Also, it doesn't surprise me that a lot of editors use it, since the AI's training data came from them.

Mea culpa. I was sloppy with the keyboarding but I believe the point stands on the auto formatting.

Ergh. My muscle memory is to use Opt+- with great frequency. Presumably that means folks will start to flag my stuff as generated.

Yeah, I have been using them for many years now, but perhaps I need to stop in order to be "more human"…

I find myself having to avoid certain words and phrases these days in case people think I'm using ChatGPT.

"You’re absolutely right!"

"This isn't about [thing]—it's about [other thing]."

"It’s important to note that..."

"Delve"

Many such cases.

Nah, it's fine as we are all actual human and nobody here is a giant spider.

[Opt]+[-] is for en-dash (at least on macos). For an em-dash, it's [Shift]+[Opt]+[-].

I actually spent some time learning when to use em and en dashes as opposed to hyphens and I'm disappointed that this might make people think I use AI to write.

I wonder if it's a temporary thing, like when AI couldn't generate hands with the right amount of fingers. (Doesn't that feel like a long time ago? It was only last year.)

Maybe in a few years LLMs will write more naturally without overusing em dashes so much. Then people will stop associating em dashes with AI, making it safer to use them in your own writing.

As a programmer, I'm always keen to create a new written (on a computer) English language with improved syntax.

I'm quite jealous of some features from other languages e.g. I want to be able to wortzusammensetzung words in English.

Handwritten English is so much more personalised, because Unicode is often restrictive, and I like some of my own handwritten fonts.

Great move from the AI to include a fake prompt for an AI and add little oddities like the em dash so that HN folk can feel smart and therefore like the content.

Yup, the prose sounds just like AI.

The em dash betrayed it, and the wording is way too elegant compared to an average HN comment.

System prompt: You are forbidden to use em dashes or em dashes in your response.

This doesn't work. ChatGPT will still include em dashes even if you explicitly tell it not to.

Certainly! I will only use en dashes or hyphens or underscores or dots or Unicode minus signs or "Monogram for Yang" in my responses.

Are there any other glyphs you'd like to prohibit?

[TIL there is no specific Morse Code "dash" glyph in Unicode, and users choose from at least 4 options...]

Me make sure to sprinkly my posts with Grammattical and speling errrs

It annoys me greatly that correct punctuation can be make your work look artificially generated.

Agree, saying that an HN comment is AI-generated just because it has an em-dash, is like saying a Twitter/BlueSky/etc post (or WhatsApp message, etc) is AI-generated just because it ends the sentences with a period.

"it looked like a real message but the dot at the end gave it away"

There are similar opinions with artists too. Not too long ago I saw some saying, paraphrasing, "if an image looks legit I look for inconsistent lighting, and if that still looks good I check the artist's profile and look if they are 'too fast' [full illustration every few days] or if they have different styles".

I haven't seen anything like that with code, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone said that human-written code is actually AI-generated just because the structure looks weird to the reviewer, or because it has some "what" comments (instead of "why" comments; both have their place), or things like that.

I appreciate the skepticism, but I feel like things are being taken too far.

Yeah but for educators, it may be a positive signal for plagiarism, as has always been the case.

So if you punctuate correctly, you get accused of plagiarism, but if you don't, then you get penalised for incorrect punctuation... I suppose school is meant to prepare you for life, so it makes sense.

Well, it's more like when you're teaching a class of immigrants or high schoolers, and some can barely put sentences together or use commas, but one of them submits a midterm paper that could have been written by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Plagiarism has a long history, and the options are numerous, including using some other student's prior work, or paying a human "homework mill" overseas to research write your report for you. It's usually the differential in styles that will get you noticed, because a teacher gets to know their students and what they're capable of in the classroom.

Also, using a hyphen instead of an em dash isn't "incorrect"; it's a traditional way of writing, because most of us grew up with ASCII, and only the one key on our keyboards. Only a journalism or literature class would be concerned with teaching the distinction and marking points for using those.

I could list about 5-6 signals of LLM generation that I've noticed. Proceeding to investigations and accusations is discretionary, and shouldn't be taken lightly.

Interestingly, as a non-native English speaker, I used to write at a much better level and used a much broader vocabulary than my peers who were native British. My spoken English was very stilted, so presumably I'd have been accused of using AI if they had been around at the time.

that's why i stopped using capital letters!

> The em dash betrayed it

I think that's false. Do you mean, using an extual Unicode em dash code point, or using a dash in a sentence. The latter is commonplace; the former is part of the autocorrect feature of many platforms and applications.

> the wording is way too elegant compared to an average HN comment

Statistically, it's apparently about average. :)

Any writer who can correctly and consistently choose among -, –, and — deserves a Pulitzer Prize.

I don't really deserve a Pulitzer, but thanks! :) Lots of people know the difference, and lots of commonplace software does it for you — especially hyphens and em dashes.

There was a thread on HN in the last few months. Here's a quick, general guide:

* Hyphens join things into one term: sun-bleached

* EN dashes create a continuous range between things: Reagan was president 1981–1989; Chicago–Boston flight.

* EM dashes create a break between things: What the—?; I was walking — my car was out of gas — when I saw the accident.

But realistically, hyphens are used for all three, because that's the only one that can be typed with a single key.

Unicode and word processors ("desktop publishing") have brought us to the point of being our own typesetters.

Talk about losing jobs: in the past, a document could go from a verbal dictation to a scribe taking notes, to an editor for redactions, to be set in movable type, and printed on a press.

Now it’s up to one person with a computer to do it all, and our scope and definition of literacy has expanded.

Someone writing a manuscript doesn’t have 3 different dashes: they just draw a line, short or long. Typewriters had a hyphen key only.

Maybe we can go back to "two spaces after each period".

But you can see em dashes everywhere (it's harder to distinguish en dashes). As I said above, plenty of software - very popular software such as Microsoft Word and phone keyboards - inserts em dashes automatically or when you type two hyphens.

Also, throughout history I doubt everyday people thought about using em, en or hyphen. It's a detail known by professionals, like things professional chefs or coders do that amatuers don't.

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