TIL I'm ChatGPT
I'm learning a lot about myself today!
this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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I use em and en dashes according to traditional grammar rules. Been that way for years. It just looks and reads nicer. AI won’t take that from me.
I love dashes – they help better convey the flow of my thinking in written form.
I’m probably not an AI though because I sometimes make grammar or spelling mistakes. Since english isn’t my native language.
Yeah I use them a ton
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It's not a proof that something was written by AI but it's a red flag.
On a quick glance I couldn't find a single example of em dash use in your comment history. You're using hyphens instead.
thanks - and i guess that's the point i should have emphasized. it isn't that we aren't using them in our writing.. it's more that the formatting in generated content uses these characters in ways that we don't (or aren't picked up by autocorrect?) when we write authentically
Here's your list of Cupcake Ingredients:
- 1 Cup of Flour
- 1 Cup of Flint, Michigan Nestle-Water
- 1 Cup of Highly Tariffed "Freedom" Eggs
- 12 fl oz of Fine Moscow Polonium
For Improved Information Accuracy, please purchase an OpenAI subscription at 50% off today! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
11/10 i made these and my children are literally glowing with happiness now
I also use em dashes. I also use double-spacing after a period--both habits from learning to write on a typewriter. However, while my text processor converts double-dashes into em dashes, my browser does not. So, when I see em dashes in a forum post, I naturally become suspicious. It is very rare for me to write a post in a text editor and then copy/paste it into a text area, and I assume this to be true with others as well.
i usually use (compose key + --. (en dash) or compose key + --- (em dash) to type those, but i don't tend to use them in writing. instead, i use en dashes for number ranges (e.g.: 3–4, 10–20) to avoid it being confused with subtraction.
Most people aren't taking the time to type in ctrl+shift+u+2+0+1+4 when a regular minus-dash would get the point across with a single keystroke. But there is enough of a distinction that some people (like you and I) will use the proper punctuation when there is an opportunity to do so.
What I find far more suspicious is the unicode hyphen, because no human would be able to tell the difference, and would therefore always choose to input a minus.
Not sure, if that's a Linux thing, but I can press Alt Gr and - to get an en-dash, as well Alt Gr and Shift and - to get an em-dash.
Mine gives me \ for AltGr+- and ¿ for AltGr+shift+- but that's probably a keyboard layout thing
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If I hold the - on my phone I get –—¯
Most people aren’t taking the time to type in ctrl+shift+u+2+0+1+4 when a regular minus-dash would get the point across with a single keystroke.
emacs:
-
C-x 8 _ m -
C-x 8 RET e m SPC d TAB RET
emacs using input methods
-
C-\ T e X RETto enter TeX input method.- - -to enter an em dash when in that input method. -
C-\ s g m l RETto enter sgml input method.& m d a s h ;to enter an em dash when in that input method. -
C-\ r f c 1 3 4 5 RETto enter rfc1345 input method.& - Mto enter an em dash when in that input method.
For X11 or Wayland, if you have assigned a key to be Compose: Compose and then three hyphens to get an em dash.
I use emacs every day but idk if this post is putting its best foot forward lol
I don't know, it seems like a fairly minimalist OS.
The stuff there is a heck of a lot easier to input than memorizing numeric Unicode codepoints and using GTK's control-shift-U thing that the parent post was suggesting.
Emacs also can do that (C-\ u c s RET to enter ucs input method, and u 2 0 1 4 with that input method enabled), but it's almost certainly not how you want to input oddball characters unless you've no other choice.
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I use them too and I hate seeing them substituted by hyphens. High five.
I must be an AI, then—does that mean I should charge for a subscription when I answer a question; maybe adding an extra premium fee on top of that sub each I'm also using a semi-column in the same sentence?
I have no idea how representative these stupid remarks you mentioned are to be considered but it's interesting to realize how their own ignorance of a certain know-how/knowledge is so, so easily becoming a proof for them that the use of said tool/knowledge by other people is making those people suspicious.
In a working society, when faced with something one doesn't know, aka faced with one's own ignorance, one would see that as an opportunity to learn something new and become less ignorant. Not anymore. Following their own 'reasoning', it's now being used as a proof that the other person must be some bot/AI, that they must be something non-human and suspicious. Difference is not considered an opportunity to enrich oneself anymore, it's an anomaly.
When dumb starts defining what's 'normal'—and what's human—one better start worrying, imho.
Btw, using the 'Azerty (French alt)' keyboard layout on Linux, this poor em-dash is just a Shift+AltGr+' away—why wouldn't I want to use it?
Legal disclaimer: this comment was generated by Libb, the first French English-speaking AI that's as human-looking as anything French can be. It was trained on baguettes and wine—please, say 'cheese' in the next 20 seconds, if you don't want for Libb to give you a real French kiss.
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Any “people” talking about simple ways to detect AI are actually AI bots trying to throw us off.
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No, you are not a computer.
thank you, fellow human.
This whole topic makes me realize I put disjointed thoughts in parentheses within other thoughts way too often. Maybe em dashes are literary functions for people with ADHD to write the way they think?
/s, sort of, I would say I'm ADHD, but too stubborn to seek a diagnosis.
Yeah idk. It's one of those things I fix into proper sentence structuring when I feel like writing more formally. Otherwise there may just be random parenthesis (like this with interesting thoughts) cluttered in occasionally - sorta lazy.
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Em dashes are hyped up, but most people aren't writing up bulleted lists themselves for a random email.
i have three reasons i'd like to share about why i disagree, but now i'm self-conscious :P
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I don't know about that, but if you use three hyphens, the Lemmy Web UI will render it as an em-dash, and you can remain human!
EDIT: Unfortunately, nobody appears to have made a Threadiverse community analogous to Reddit's /r/totallynotrobots.