Every time I see the em-dash call out on here I get defensive because I’ve been writing like that forever! Where do people think that came from anyway? It’s obviously massively represented in the training data!
They're emdashing because the style guide for posttraining makes it emdash. Just like the post-training for GPT 3.5 made it speak African English and the post-training for 4o makes it say stuff like "it's giving wild energy when the vibes are on peak" plus a bunch of random emoji.
This is a misunderstanding. At best, some people thought that GPT 3.5 output resembled African English.
There isn't one?
Oh, maybe that's why people who didn't already know or care about emdashes are very alert to their presence.
If you have to do something very exotic with keypresses or copypaste from a tool or build your own macro to get something like an emdash, or , it's going to stand out, even if it's an integral part of standard operating systems.
I like them as an AI shibboleth, though -- the antennae go up, and I pay more attention to what I'm reading when I see it, so it raises the bar for the humans that ostensibly ought to be better at writing than the rest of us.
Edit: Interesting. I tried using -- and it doesn't work for me. I'd have to go change settings somewhere, or switch the browser I'm using to elicit an em-dash. I don't think I've ever actually written one, at least intentionally, and it wasn't until today that I was even aware of hyphen-hyphen.
Edit again: I had to go into system settings and assign a compose key — after that, I can now do em-dashes. Having degrees° will be nice, too, I guess.
The reason "--" autocorrects to an em dash in practically any word processing software (not talking about browsers) is that that's the accepted way to type it on a typewriter. And you don't need to go into any system settings to enable it. It came in around when things like Smart Quotes came in.
I've used em-dash since I got my first MacBook in 2008.
- Option + minus gives you en-dash
- Option + Shift + minus gives you em-dash
It quickly becomes automatic (as are a bunch of other shortcuts). Here's a question about this from 2006: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/377843
Boy, I sure hope they don't think me an AI.
Just because many people have no idea how to use type certain characters on their devices shouldn't mean we all have to go along with their superstitions.
The dash key is right between the "0" and the "="
Press it twice and just about every word processing program in existence will turn it into an emdash.
> There isn't one?
Mac, alt-minus. Did by accident once, causing confusion because Xcode uses monospace font where -, – and — look identical, and an m-dash where a minus should be gets a compiler error.
iOS, long-press on the "-" key.
I've been using Macs for decades; it's called the Option key; no seasoned Mac user calls it "Alt".
I know when a PC-style keyboard is attached to a Mac, the Alt key functions as the Option key. [1]
- Option-minus creates an en dash
- Option-Shift-minus creates an em dash
[1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/intro-to-mac-keyboa...
[2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-...
But I also have windows keyboards plugged in. Hard enough getting the ones I like around here without also constraining them to Apple's preferred symbols printed on the keys.
These days word is less popular though, with google docs, pages, and other editors taking pieces of the pie. Maybe that’s where the skepticism comes from.