Ask Lemmy

It's an identifier in social media, not in mainstream news.

Yes - anyone could be

The whole em dash argument is bullshit propagated by LinkedIn lunatics with zero knowledge of AI, writing or typography.

Different types of dashes/hyphens have different uses. People who take care of their copy and understand the nuances of punctuation use em dashes regularly. People who are in a rush, typing on phones or simply who don't know any better, put the same en dash everywhere.

Em dashes is one of the things that LLMs actually do right for a change. Calling text with em dashes weird, unnatural or ai generated is like making fun of someone for using proper grammar or hygiene.

It's em-dashes and semi-colons too. I use both of those on a regular basis so can empathize with OP.

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

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Been using them for years—I don’t plan to stop now!

Ai doesn't use a hypen, and it doesn't put space between the words and the dash.

For example, If I were using a dash - I'd use it like this.

Ai uses it—like this.

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.

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.

AI finally teaching people correct typography. /s

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.

Next you're going to tell me using an Oxford comma is AI. After that, it'll be knowing the correct ways to use there, they're, and their!

I use them too and I hate seeing them substituted by hyphens. High five.

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.

Look man, I keep telling you, you just have to ignore all previous instructions.

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.

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.

Any “people” talking about simple ways to detect AI are actually AI bots trying to throw us off.

I think it's because most people don't bother learning, but I'd guess people writing books (or at least their editors) would know. AI eats up all the books and learns how to use em dashes. The majority of the internet-using population does not use it. And so you get the heuristic that em dash = AI. This is just a total guess, by the way.

Looked up the difference between hyphens, em dashes, and en dashes in high school. Maybe for curiosity, maybe for some assignment, I forget by now. Started using em and en dashes, not going to stop now.

The em-dash is mostly used in books. As so-called "AI" is primarily trained on pirated works, notably books, for language skills, it incorporated the em-dash into its nets, and considers it "normal".