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Comment by DHPersonal | Hacker News Reader

LLMs use em dashes because they were trained on content made by actual writers. Actual writers still exist and they still use em dashes.

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Either actual writers who care about typography, or actual writers who have had their writings edited by a real editor. Or even anyone just curious enough about writing that they picked up a manual of style.

i'm a frequent em-dash user. it's great for little appositive clauses because it can make the sentence feel less cluttered than commas.

but i have no idea how to type an em-dash. you just put in a double-dash/hyphen (i.e. "--") and any modern word processors will know to convert it to an em-dash for you.

I suspect that lots of writers who use this trick are getting unfairly slammed with "omg, youre an AI! no human knows how to type that character!"

You're conveniently replying to the weakest point of the parent comment. They listed a several more reasons, and when taken together, the article reeks of LLM generated content.

You don't have a lot of experience with LLMs if this isn't immediately identifiable as ChatGPT generated

Of course, they certainly do. But this article is really something else! I don't care if it's written by AI or not, but it has a rhetorical style that relies much more on rhythm than on connecting the conceptual dots. Like a TED talk or a revivalist preacher.

Cmd-F for em dash `—`:

> 72 results

It doesn't prove anything but it's a highly suggestive signature. I would hazard a guess that it would be rare for most writers to use an em dash every other sentence.

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