Jason LefkowitzI don’t use em dashes because I’m an AI. I use em dashes because I’m pretentious
You could be forgiven for thinking I’m an AI though, since I am both extremely confident and frequently wrong
Jim Nielsen@jalefkowit you just need to start charging money for your thoughts and I think you’re there lol
@jimniels Setting up a 1-900 number and calling it an API
elle mundy@jalefkowit @jimniels available phone interface
Medea Vanamonde🏳️⚧️ ♀@jalefkowit @maxleibman was your farther a turkey baster?
Jack Yan (甄爵恩)@jalefkowit And because they are the correct punctuation to use in those circumstances. (Also I was using them long before “AI”—easy enough to find among my earliest posts in the 2010s here.)
@jackyan I always have to be careful, as since boyhood I have had a fondness for the kinds of long, complex sentences that get you stuffed inside a locker
Carrie Shanafelt@jalefkowit I use them because I read Tristram Shandy when I was 21.
Just a Bill@jalefkowit No one ever addresses whether the presence of spaces around em dashes changes the interpretation. And if I use en dashes with spaces – like this – does it mean I’m AI, or that I’m going to get stuffed in a locker?
as a large fashion model,
Ivan Sagalaev 
@jalefkowit I use them because it's a flex of someone who bothered to setup a typographic layout switch in their GNOME settings :-)
Bradley M. Kuhn@jalefkowit I was so glad when — was a supported Unicode character everywhere.
Jens Finkhäuser@bkuhn @jalefkowit As a LaTeX snob, I used em-dashes way before they were cool.
Ok, @jens, I couldn't resist showing off (… both my advanced age & geek cred). I did successive `find`s w/ older & older `-mtime`s. I found my oldest record of using LaTeX's ‘---’ command to yield ‘—’. Turns out, I first did it on 1993-04-06 at 13:28 US/Eastern, in a paper for a literature class about _Waiting for Godot_.
I realize LaTeX reserved single ‘-’ for a hyphen, but I remember @karen when I first met her asking my WTF I used *3* (& not *2*) ‘-’'s for ‘—’ in emails.
Cc: @jalefkowit
I don't think I have records *quite* that old of using LaTeX, but it wouldn't be much younger. I can easily reconstruct that I switched to the unstable 1.3 series of Linux for a while, because 2.0 took so damn long, but before that I have no clear memory of kernel versions. That puts me in between '96 (2.0) and around '92 when the 486DX2/66 came out that I first ran Linux on <insert anecdote about Quake>.
It was in that period that I discovered LaTeX.
… & before anyone asks: I did *not* open `/home/bkuhn/Files/Undergradaute/CLASSES/modern-world/PAPERS/godot.paper.tex` & reread my 1993 literature paper for Dr. Osteen.
I can tell from the 3 lines `fgrep` returned that my writing skills then were pathetically cringe. I feel bad for Dr. Osteen & other professors who must read undergraduate papers. 😬
I did, though, look up Dr. Osteen & I'm surprised he's not yet retired:
https://www.loyola.edu/academics/english/faculty/osteen-mark.html
… although neither he nor I were bald in 1993.👴🤔
Matt@jalefkowit I went out of my way to learn how to type an em dash—just to find out the AI was all doing it.
Noortje Van Leeuwen@jalefkowit i like em dashes for what they convey...
One of my most used codes is {alt 0151} when i write my novels and stories...
One of my most used codes is {alt 0151} when i write my novels and stories...
João Santos> I don’t use em dashes because I’m an AI — I use em dashes because I’m pretentious
Fixed that for you
Simon Richter@jmcs @jalefkowit I would have gone for a semicolon here.
Denis Defreyne@jalefkowit I started using two-em dashes (⸺) recently for redacting bits of content. I like to think that is is even more pretentious—greatly recommended.
UnlikelyLass@jalefkowit Look, it's either emdashes or EVEN MORE parenthesis. Pick your poison, I guess.
MissConstrue@jalefkowit I feel the same way about semicolons! 🤘🏼🤣
Eric T. MacKnight@jalefkowit Hmmm. Is using em dashes pretentious? Or is *writing about em dashes* pretentious? 😉
Tyler Stone 
@jalefkowit You could increase your pretentiousness by using a semi-colon to join those two clauses.
Paul Drye@jalefkowit First of all—how dare you!
Daks 
@jalefkowit
I don’t use em dashes because I’m an AI—I use em dashes because I’m pretentious :)
I don’t use em dashes because I’m an AI—I use em dashes because I’m pretentious :)
Okuna@jalefkowit better than Vice versa. Which is me
Neil E. Hodges@jalefkowit Same. :3
FElon&Felon47🇺🇦🇨🇦🇩🇰🇹🇼@jalefkowit I use 2 hyphens in a row because I'm geriatrascii and too lazy to learn how to make em dash on each of the platforms I use.
@RustedComputing Oooh, I can help with that! 😀
Get a compose key. It works the same everywhere!
