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Comment by bflesch | Hacker News Reader

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I'd probably use either a semicolon or a period there. But this demonization of a perfectly reasonable English punctuation mark absolutely has to stop.

It's fine to criticize a comment that looks like AI in a thread where someone complains about AI.

The sentence has exactly same meaning if they'd use a single "-" as well. I don't know which browsers have <textarea>s where double "--" is turned into emdash, but on the systems I'm familiar with one needs to go certain lengths before an emdash appears.

Emdash does not magically appear, and it seems some people love playing with the AI connotation.

On MacOS it's Shift + Option + Hyphen.

On mobile it's long-press the hyphen on the keyboard.

On Windows I use https://cemrajc.github.io/em-n-en/ so that ==- is turned into it system-wide.

On recent Ubuntu versions, you can set up Compose Key, for example with Caps Lock: https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-get-em-dash-ubuntu-lin...

I've long been an em-dash user and enjoyer and hope that using it stops becoming such a signal for AI text.

On iOS you don't have to do anything, -- gets autocorrected to an em-dash. This has been in iOS for almost 10 years IIRC.

Honestly, the whole, ooh em-dash means it must be AI meme makes me want to use them like I always have more.

It's important to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as a human who writes like AI. AI uses literary devices that humans have used for centuries, and that just because a bit of text has an em-dash, or certain tropes, doesn't mean it's LLM generated text. Yes, LLMs over-use those tropes but we can't keep calling out whats effectively just classical rhetoric as a definitive measure for detecting LLM generated text.

In a world where double quotes are incredibly overloaded in meaning, the multiple types of dashes (including hyphens and double hyphens) do seem excessive. But em dashes are widely used and are a pretty commonly prescribed style. I use em dashes in more formal writing and double hyphens in comments here just because it's incrementally easier.

I type punctuation deliberately, and have done so for over a decade. A Compose key is a wonderful thing. Curly quotes, em dashes, en dashes, minus signs, narrow no-break spaces and quite a lot more—I type them because that’s what I mean.

You will find more than a few here on HN that type what they want rather than what standard keyboards make easiest.

No space em dash = a real person who has been bulldozed by LLMs using it with spaces.

> No space em dash = a real person who has been bulldozed by LLMs using it with spaces.

Setting an em-dash used for parentheticals closed (with no space)—or sometimes with thin spaces—is the common American literary/academic style (Chicago Manual, APA, and MLA all prefer closed); setting it open—with full word spaces—is the common American practice in journalism (reflected in the AP style guide). Not using em-dash at all for that use, but instead using an en-dash set open is the common British practice.

And that's why it should be interpreted as a one way signal. I.e. lack of spaces is a great indication a human wrote it but spaces sround an em dash alone is not a particularly strong indication it was AI.

Even for Americans, there are several style guidelines/modern preferences (particularly around web content) which don't guarantee the lack of spaces around an em dash. Hence even American LLMs using spaces. Ecen my natural em dash usage always included spaces as an American.

I used to use em dashes with spaces. I started using them without when I was more into reading style guides and it was—if I recall correctly—the Chicago Manual of Style which doesn’t use spaces. This was way before LLMs came onto the scene as a consumer technology.

The Chicago Manual indeed advises against spaces, but it’s written for books. AP Stylebook — that recommends spaces — is for papers. Comments are an even shorter form, so they’re closer to AP than to Chicago.

When I go to print, I use hairspace, but it’s not worth the trouble in comments.

> Comments are an even shorter form, so they’re closer to AP than to Chicago.

I’m not sure I agree with using length as the metric to decide which style guide is more appropriate for comments. I’d rather follow one consistent style in general than change it depending on the type of content I’m writing.

Still, good point on the style guides targeting specific usages.

I’ve never figured out how to actually make an emdash on my keyboard (or any 7 bit clean keyboard). I had to look it up. No one does this dance in factor of a single hyphen other than a machine my friend, spaces or no. —__–

I've had to configure a few editors to stop turning my natural '<space>--<space>' into endashes...

I hate any editor changing anything without permission (especially ones that insert the closing paren/bracket).

I used to love Linux's compose keys, though, where I could just press `<win>--.` to get an en dash and `<win>---` to get an em. Most of the compose combinations were guessable, like `<win>a'` for á, `<win>co` for ©.

MacOS has a great keyboard locale switcher, but the lack of real compose keys limits things. Most characters you can press and hold and get some accented versions, but it's very slow if you're typing in French or something in the EN layout. It also has a built-in character picker, which is really nice but even more slow.

Nah, I decided on em dashes with no space many years ago. In Australia, en dash with spaces is more popular now. Em dash without spaces is the older style. I deliberately chose the older style: for I say, the old is good.

Just wait until I decide to go all in on TWO-EM DASH⸺I have thought for a long time that EM DASH isn’t wide enough. Or maybe THREE-EM DASH⸻though it’s normally too wide. But alas, font support isn’t good on these so you might get bad alignment or line-height inconsistency; and I might end up wanting to surround it with THIN SPACE or HAIR SPACE, and HN mangles exotic spaces to just SPACE. :-(

(Honestly, my original comment would be improved by using TWO-EM DASH, or maybe even THREE-EM.)

They also have no spaces around the em dash. Must be followers of Chicago Manual of Style (and not AP Stylebook.)

> Must be followers of Chicago Manual of Style (and not AP Stylebook.)

You know, there are more than two possible choices. I scorn to subject myself to any style guide for my personal writing… let alone an American one. People used em-dash-sans-space long before CMOS was dreamed up.

I sha’n’t follow all the older traditions I find, but I do frequently favour them.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiret has a lot of options for you :)

Or we follow Occam's razor and accept that a random guy whose comment looks like AI in a tech forum discussing AI is not an advanced scribe following a certain school of writing, but rather some vibe coder who AI-optimizes their comments.

Both my computer and my phone replace two dash symbols with an em dash, and have been doing so since well before the invention of AI.

The GP’s post history suggests they have some touch with typography.

This is HN. We’re not typical people. Quite a few of us have been consistently and deliberately using em dashes for a long, long time.

Please face it: especially on a site like HN, you will encounter em dashes from real humans, whether converted by some system software or typed deliberately.

Em dashes are a weak signal at best. On HN, they’re a very weak signal.

You didn't spell any words wrong!!! That's so obviously AI slop you're posting. What a hypocrite! At least activate a skill that randmly misspells words to mask that you're using AI to complain about other people using AI.

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