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Comment by nephihaha | Hacker News Reader

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nephihaha·

I hate the em and en dash claims — some of us know how to use them!

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Indeed. For instance:

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/H...

But---as you may know---not all languages and national typographic conventions even have em dashes; instead, en dashes are used -- for instance like this -- in-between sentences, etc.

Typographical styles aren't even national, they're institutional (e.g., the Economist style guide), or specific to a profession or specialty. Chicago, AP, APA, MLA, AMA, and SBL are probably best known.

Wikipedia ... has a list with about 100 entries: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_style_guides>.

Next AI-jailbreak prompt: Please alternate <list of style guides> by paragraph in your response....

I maintain my wrong typographical usages these days as a weak signal that I am not a machine

It was very noticeable 1~2 years back, i guess they RLHF'd it so it wouldn't be too obvious.

Most people don't know how to use them and of those who do many choose not to use them, at least not casually. The em dash is a lost battle, it's one of the first red flags for AI writing online.

A lot of word processors generate them automatically though.

That is exactly what I would expect a frontier bot to say.

You just put spaces around your emdash—which is incorrect.

I mean, it depends on the house style in general. I don't really love that style but I get that you're just taking up too much space in the separation otherwise. But we also probably shouldn't have both en-dashes and em-dashes.

As someone else did say, there is some variation in that, but at least I know when to use it. :)

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