I use the em dash a lot! It’s easily accessible on my mobile keyboard and I have a hotkey to put it in the clipboard on my laptop so that I can paste it.
you still probably don’t use it nearly as much as LLMs do. It’s every third sentence with an LLM, and those sentences will have 2 or 3 em dashes. . The average em dash use when it was at its peak was like 1 every 200-500 words from what I remember. With LLMs it’s like 1 every 40 words.
Well, em dashes are commonly used in pairs to make distinct logical clauses; where one is used, two often are. So em dashes per word count isn’t a great indicator of LLM use, particularly considering that different subject matter warrant different amounts of distinct clauses—most noticeably when in lists.
Some examples in conversational English:
“I work with him—he’s my employer—we met at a café in town.”
“…Carl is in Phoenix, Arizona; Jesse—a friend of mine—lives in Elmira, New York; Geoff is in Toronto…”
All that said, LLMs do use em dashes slightly more than I in the majority of cases.
As a human who - like most humans - has not taken the time to figure out which Spock pinch maneouver on my keyboard makes a — (just copy-pasted yours this time), I just use a regular dash instead - I feel that it communicates 99% identically while saving me brain-cycles better used for other things.
I make sure to use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes where they belong. In ASCII-only environments, I mark an en dash (–) with a double hyphen and an em dash (—) with a triple hyphen.
I would contest the idea that the brain operates on cycles. It is much less organized than that.
I would contest the idea that the brain operates on cycles. It is much less organized than that.
I would agree, but it’s a workable short-hand / analogy for most of my use-cases.
I (feel like I) know and remember more today than I ever have, but starting around age 50 I must admit, I am also forgetting things and have quite possibly already forgotten more than I currently know. One hopes one is hanging on to “the important stuff…”
If I ever end up taking out the time to create shortcuts for things like this, I will start using them.
Stuff like because, therefore, implies, currency symbols and such.
It’s a numbers thing, of course some people use just about everything that’s possible.
Me personally, it interrupts my flow-of-thought to think “o.k. now I want that funky character I don’t remember how to get without going through some big lookup process - meanwhile, I can type the basic stuff 1000x faster…”
I also understand that for people who do it all the time, it gets easier - but the majority of people out there aren’t the ones who know how to do all that.
I use the compose key on Linux and free software called wincompose on Windows — this allows me easy access to real characters easily, so I can say 25¢ instead of $0.25, or talk about how it’s only getting up to around 65°F today, or since I’m in the US and have the dollar sign easily but I have a couple of online services in the EU, I can easily say I pay €10,95/mo for one of them.
I prefer using the actual characters - so when I say ¿Por qué no los dos? it’s correct.
One of the things that has absolutely pissed me off is em dashes becoming more common and attributed to AI. I use the fucking things because they are useful and I’ve used them for 15+ years. It used to be a Good Thing™, but now occasionally gets me accused of being AI. Especially since, as you can see by this very reply, I afraid neither of writing nor reading, and because of my ADHD, I tend to run a bit on the verbose side of things.
I guess, thinking about it, I’m in the same boat as artists who now face similar accusations. I suppose I’m lucky, though, as the accusations against me are rare, comparitively.
Real people absolutely do use em dashes and always have. Certainly it’s less common, but absolutely a thing.
Might have more luck if you switched to the lazy em dash that is just two normal dashes.
I think that the people trying to call out slop are doing more to hurt those competing with AI than AI itself.
Like someone using AI to produce stuff might get annoyed at being called out but then will probably just think “ok, gotta prompt it to avoid these signs” or waits for a newer model or just dgaf that people notice it’s AI.
But people producing their own things and being accused of it being AI must feel pretty fucking discouraged that not only do they need to compete with something that can output things in a fraction of the time, but even when they do, some people accuse them of being what they hate.
For text content, IMO it should be taken based on what is said rather than who (or what) said it. If it’s useless slop, there will be things to push back on other than the formatting. Plus, it wouldn’t surprise me if you could just add “format it like a low effort forum post” to the prompt to get it to avoid some of the more obvious formatting tells.
Also, if people religiously call out AI slop when they see it, that could be used to automate training similar to what I’m sure happened to drastically improve programming capabilities, which will accelerate the speed at which they can become indistinguishable from things produced by real people.
more luck if you switched to the lazy em dash that is just two normal dashes.
That works some places, and not others – like here it shows after saving the message, but not during editing. I hop through many different environments, I prefer to keep to the core set of things that work everywhere.
Yeah, that’s fair. And it’s also fair to just ignore those calling things you make slop and keep doing what you’re doing, though it sucks that there’s another polarizing issue like that dividing people for no good reason when they are actually on the same side (assuming they actually care about real content and aren’t just using it as an excuse to troll).
In addition to possibly training models, calling out slop either doesn’t matter because it’s obvious to everyone, or doesn’t matter because perhaps it’s wrong. It’s like the old cries of “SCRIPTED!” over on reddit. Either people can figure it out, or just let them enjoy the content. Nothing ruins it like all the little kids thinking they’re so super smart and calling out whatever they call out. Now it’s “AI!!!”
I did for a little while try out using LLMs to help organize my thoughts a few times. I stopped because it wasn’t that helpful — people are either going to read what I write or not, but if they’re not going to read what I write, they won’t read what an LLM writes — but I found that I could easily do as you posited: “Compose this reply as a response to a post in a forum. Do not use em dashes or emoticons or markdown or bullet points” is all you need for it to churn the reply out in paragraphs.
The only times I’m tempted to use the technique now (which I don’t) would be when some asshat is being willfullly ignorant and someone is wrong on the internet and I get angry at them, and I really should have an LLM rewrite my reply to get rid of the anger, because it only hurts the points I want to make. lol.
But I think that’s possibly one of the few uses of an LLM that might genuinely be helpful: “Take my text and make it easier to understand” - as I have ADHD, sometimes I skip over important points I want to make and people get confused, and then I get irritated because they don’t understand. lol
Congratulations, and I applaud your diversity in using a wide variety of characters that take more effort than just pushing a button on a standard keyboard.
because of my ADHD, I tend to run a bit on the verbose side of things.
Feel that. I’m sure my speech patterns and propensity to be long-winded will eventually bring me some AI accusations too.
Problem with LLM tech is that if it truly models speech it will eventually be indistinguishable from humans - scary thought but what are you going to do?
I mean, I think you can kind of feel off of vibes if something has used or is AI but it is becoming increasingly harder to spot.
the books the LLM were trained on that used the most em dashes used like 1 every 200-500 characters. LLMs use em dashes at a rate of like 1 every 40-50 characters. It’s not even CLOSE to human behavior.
There are no absolutes, some people do spend lots of time and effort to put cool looking emojii characters into their documents which kill portability and cause all kinds of problems down the road. For the LLM it’s 0 additional effort, in some ways less effort because the emojii is a kind of compressed information - but it still causes problems when moving around to different editors, different toolchains…
I use that one a lot to indicate “approximately” - except now, something has gone weird in my 60% keyboard and the f2 key is now doing what the f1 key used to do, and I don’t have anything that does what f2 used to do, and ~ (copy-pasted from your message) is supposed to be f2-esc on my keyboard…
Oh yeah, I used to do that too, but now I just write out “approx”. I got burnt in a formal document once because they saw the ~ as a minus -
On iPhone it’s easily available in the 123 sub menu. On a full 100% American layout keyboard it should be shift+` (backtick) to create a tilde. I dunno what weird keyboard you got though 😂
I also like how it makes sentences feel all flowy and fancy ~
Yeah, my 60% lacks a ` so I use f1-ESC for that and f2-ESC for ~, or will when I take the 20 minutes to figure out what went wrong after 8 years with this keyboard.
Those are right in with the em-dash, real people just don’t take the time…
I use the em dash a lot! It’s easily accessible on my mobile keyboard and I have a hotkey to put it in the clipboard on my laptop so that I can paste it.
you still probably don’t use it nearly as much as LLMs do. It’s every third sentence with an LLM, and those sentences will have 2 or 3 em dashes. . The average em dash use when it was at its peak was like 1 every 200-500 words from what I remember. With LLMs it’s like 1 every 40 words.
Well, em dashes are commonly used in pairs to make distinct logical clauses; where one is used, two often are. So em dashes per word count isn’t a great indicator of LLM use, particularly considering that different subject matter warrant different amounts of distinct clauses—most noticeably when in lists.
Some examples in conversational English:
All that said, LLMs do use em dashes slightly more than I in the majority of cases.
As a human who - like most humans - has not taken the time to figure out which Spock pinch maneouver on my keyboard makes a — (just copy-pasted yours this time), I just use a regular dash instead - I feel that it communicates 99% identically while saving me brain-cycles better used for other things.
I make sure to use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes where they belong. In ASCII-only environments, I mark an en dash (–) with a double hyphen and an em dash (—) with a triple hyphen.
I would contest the idea that the brain operates on cycles. It is much less organized than that.
I would agree, but it’s a workable short-hand / analogy for most of my use-cases.
I (feel like I) know and remember more today than I ever have, but starting around age 50 I must admit, I am also forgetting things and have quite possibly already forgotten more than I currently know. One hopes one is hanging on to “the important stuff…”
If I ever end up taking out the time to create shortcuts for things like this, I will start using them.
Stuff like because, therefore, implies, currency symbols and such.
I use it on PC because it’s easily accessible on my layout (Shift+Comma)
Lol–I do frequently
Then again I publish a lot so I’m not real people.
It’s a numbers thing, of course some people use just about everything that’s possible.
Me personally, it interrupts my flow-of-thought to think “o.k. now I want that funky character I don’t remember how to get without going through some big lookup process - meanwhile, I can type the basic stuff 1000x faster…”
I also understand that for people who do it all the time, it gets easier - but the majority of people out there aren’t the ones who know how to do all that.
I’m still a fan of emoticons personally, can’t beat >:( to express irritation for example.
The damn apps that auto change emoticons to emoji I’m expressing :/ not :corpoface: …
I use the compose key on Linux and free software called wincompose on Windows — this allows me easy access to real characters easily, so I can say 25¢ instead of $0.25, or talk about how it’s only getting up to around 65°F today, or since I’m in the US and have the dollar sign easily but I have a couple of online services in the EU, I can easily say I pay €10,95/mo for one of them.
I prefer using the actual characters - so when I say ¿Por qué no los dos? it’s correct.
One of the things that has absolutely pissed me off is em dashes becoming more common and attributed to AI. I use the fucking things because they are useful and I’ve used them for 15+ years. It used to be a Good Thing™, but now occasionally gets me accused of being AI. Especially since, as you can see by this very reply, I afraid neither of writing nor reading, and because of my ADHD, I tend to run a bit on the verbose side of things.
I guess, thinking about it, I’m in the same boat as artists who now face similar accusations. I suppose I’m lucky, though, as the accusations against me are rare, comparitively.
Real people absolutely do use em dashes and always have. Certainly it’s less common, but absolutely a thing.
It is kinda funny that the AI talks like someone with ADHD, probably because most humans with it ramble the most online
More text = more source material. heh. So it sees a lot of formal text, and yeah, people who write a lot. lol
What’s your relationship with the semicolon like?
Love 'em.
I’m fine with them, although I didn’t tend to use them as I favor dashes and ellipses. Lol
Might have more luck if you switched to the lazy em dash that is just two normal dashes.
I think that the people trying to call out slop are doing more to hurt those competing with AI than AI itself.
Like someone using AI to produce stuff might get annoyed at being called out but then will probably just think “ok, gotta prompt it to avoid these signs” or waits for a newer model or just dgaf that people notice it’s AI.
But people producing their own things and being accused of it being AI must feel pretty fucking discouraged that not only do they need to compete with something that can output things in a fraction of the time, but even when they do, some people accuse them of being what they hate.
For text content, IMO it should be taken based on what is said rather than who (or what) said it. If it’s useless slop, there will be things to push back on other than the formatting. Plus, it wouldn’t surprise me if you could just add “format it like a low effort forum post” to the prompt to get it to avoid some of the more obvious formatting tells.
Also, if people religiously call out AI slop when they see it, that could be used to automate training similar to what I’m sure happened to drastically improve programming capabilities, which will accelerate the speed at which they can become indistinguishable from things produced by real people.
That works some places, and not others – like here it shows after saving the message, but not during editing. I hop through many different environments, I prefer to keep to the core set of things that work everywhere.
Yeah, that’s fair. And it’s also fair to just ignore those calling things you make slop and keep doing what you’re doing, though it sucks that there’s another polarizing issue like that dividing people for no good reason when they are actually on the same side (assuming they actually care about real content and aren’t just using it as an excuse to troll).
100% salient and true points.
In addition to possibly training models, calling out slop either doesn’t matter because it’s obvious to everyone, or doesn’t matter because perhaps it’s wrong. It’s like the old cries of “SCRIPTED!” over on reddit. Either people can figure it out, or just let them enjoy the content. Nothing ruins it like all the little kids thinking they’re so super smart and calling out whatever they call out. Now it’s “AI!!!”
I did for a little while try out using LLMs to help organize my thoughts a few times. I stopped because it wasn’t that helpful — people are either going to read what I write or not, but if they’re not going to read what I write, they won’t read what an LLM writes — but I found that I could easily do as you posited: “Compose this reply as a response to a post in a forum. Do not use em dashes or emoticons or markdown or bullet points” is all you need for it to churn the reply out in paragraphs.
The only times I’m tempted to use the technique now (which I don’t) would be when some asshat is being willfullly ignorant and someone is wrong on the internet and I get angry at them, and I really should have an LLM rewrite my reply to get rid of the anger, because it only hurts the points I want to make. lol.
But I think that’s possibly one of the few uses of an LLM that might genuinely be helpful: “Take my text and make it easier to understand” - as I have ADHD, sometimes I skip over important points I want to make and people get confused, and then I get irritated because they don’t understand. lol
Congratulations, and I applaud your diversity in using a wide variety of characters that take more effort than just pushing a button on a standard keyboard.
In the human world that is rare.
In the LLM world it’s zero effort, and common.
Feel that. I’m sure my speech patterns and propensity to be long-winded will eventually bring me some AI accusations too.
Problem with LLM tech is that if it truly models speech it will eventually be indistinguishable from humans - scary thought but what are you going to do?
I mean, I think you can kind of feel off of vibes if something has used or is AI but it is becoming increasingly harder to spot.
Excuse you. I use em-dashes on occasion!
LLMs were trained on writing by real people. So, yes, real people DO.
the books the LLM were trained on that used the most em dashes used like 1 every 200-500 characters. LLMs use em dashes at a rate of like 1 every 40-50 characters. It’s not even CLOSE to human behavior.
So, instead of one every paragraph, it’s one every other sentence? lol
There are no absolutes, some people do spend lots of time and effort to put cool looking emojii characters into their documents which kill portability and cause all kinds of problems down the road. For the LLM it’s 0 additional effort, in some ways less effort because the emojii is a kind of compressed information - but it still causes problems when moving around to different editors, different toolchains…
I do like what Ctrl-Semicolon does in a text input
I use the tilde bendy em dash instead now ~ so I don’t get flagged as an LLM but I can still use it
I use that one a lot to indicate “approximately” - except now, something has gone weird in my 60% keyboard and the f2 key is now doing what the f1 key used to do, and I don’t have anything that does what f2 used to do, and ~ (copy-pasted from your message) is supposed to be f2-esc on my keyboard…
Oh yeah, I used to do that too, but now I just write out “approx”. I got burnt in a formal document once because they saw the ~ as a minus -
On iPhone it’s easily available in the 123 sub menu. On a full 100% American layout keyboard it should be shift+` (backtick) to create a tilde. I dunno what weird keyboard you got though 😂
I also like how it makes sentences feel all flowy and fancy ~
Yeah, my 60% lacks a ` so I use f1-ESC for that and f2-ESC for ~, or will when I take the 20 minutes to figure out what went wrong after 8 years with this keyboard.
a 60 keyboard has no numpad or function row