Amin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025
I will repeat this as many times as I need to: no matter how terrible you think your writing is, I would far rather read it than anything that came out of an LLM.
Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025

@amin Reading articles written by AI can be interesting — spotting AI articles can be fun for some people.
It's not just that they sound robotic or remove all personal associations, there's lots of other ways to tell such as:

  • use of em-dashes (often overuse of them)
  • use of "It's not just", "not only" sentence structures
  • lists of three

(This post was written by a human, in an attempt at satire in the tone of AI)

P.S. I agree. I'd always prefer to read an article full of poor spelling and grammar than a dull and robotic supposed fact dump

Show threadPaul Wilde    

@amin i recently pointed out to one of my clients that an article they had "written" and put in their newsletter was clearly written by AI

It contained 14 em-dashes. Don't get me wrong, em-dashes have a purpose, but when they said "no I typed them" I responded, "OK, type me an em-dash now on your keyboard"
Long story short, they couldn't.

Jul 14, 2025 at 6:58amWeb
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@paul

I mean, it's possible that the software they used converts "--" to "—", but if they didn't present that in their own defenses, it's not likely they realized.

Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025

@amin good point. I wonder if I can find the original somewhere, I'd love to compare with the published version

(They did admit it's AI adjusted in the end by the way!)

Show threadthedoctorJul 14, 2025
@paul @amin Is there a semantic purpose to an em-dash, as opposed to other kinds of dashes? I never use any myself.
Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025

@thedoctor my understanding is it can be used similar to how we sometimes use a comma today to put a sort of footnote in the middle of a sentence.

@amin made a great example when pointing out I used an em-dash in my first post

It was used a lot in history, just not so much these days. If AI is good for one thing though, it's for bringing the em-dash back

Show threadthedoctorJul 14, 2025
@paul @amin And other dashes are used for different purposes?
Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025

@thedoctor
Yep, the article in @amin 's post goes through a few of them

I use them all wrong so I'm not going to even try to summarise 🤣

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@paul @thedoctor @amin I just remember that they are called en-dash and em-dash because the - is the lenght of an n and the em-dash is the length of an m :)
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @paul @thedoctor

Yes!

"em" is a valid unit in CSS, btw, and one of the most useful. It represents the height of a capital letter M in the font size of the element. "rem" ("root em") is the height of a capital letter M in the root element (<html>).

Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025

@amin @sotolf @thedoctor Woah... I use CSS em all the time and did not even make this connection!

mind blown!

Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@paul @sotolf @thedoctor

My favorite CSS sizing units, in order:

  • fr
  • vw/vh
  • ch
  • rem
  • em
  • %
    …
    …
    …
    …
    …
  • px
Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul @thedoctor Why does it have that many? :/
Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025

@sotolf @amin @thedoctor because people have tried and failed to remove px so many times but for some reason people still use it.

guilty face

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@paul @amin @thedoctor Insert XKCD New standard meme here.
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @paul @thedoctor

They all do/mean different things. 🤷

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul @thedoctor It shows that it's created by americans, everything to not use the metric system :p
Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025
@sotolf @amin @thedoctor dammit, I was about to do this same joke! 
Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@paul @amin @thedoctor Well, you could do the " why is it lacking banana and football field" joke :p
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @paul @thedoctor

Each quotation mark you used there was actually the shorthand for the inch unit.

Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @paul @thedoctor

Okay, correction, I would rank the CSS "in" unit even lower than px. The "cm" unit is equally useless in CSS.

Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@thedoctor @paul

Yep. Hyphens (-) and en dashes (–) are used specifically to connect words into a compound word. "His light-headed friend" for example, combines "light" and "headed" into one compound adjective to describe friend (I recently learned this isn't necessary if the compound adjective is the object: "His friend is light headed").

An en dash would be either used to connect ranges of numbers/dates ("1990–1991", "Jan–Feb") or in cases where one half of the compound word is itself two words (I'm often in this situation but I'm having trouble thinking of an example), but in both cases people usually just use a hyphen instead and no one cares.

This article does a great job explaining it all with examples: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-to-use

How to Use Em Dashes (—), En Dashes (–) , and Hyphens (-)

Be dashing—and do it well

Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@thedoctor @paul

and no one cares.

Truly a heinous tragedy. 😭

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @thedoctor @paul Norwegian news papers often also use the "Quote dash" Basically a paragraph of text preceded by - this means that it's a summarised rewritten quote that is meant to get the correct thoughts behind it while not being word for word what was said.
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @thedoctor @paul

Huh, I hadn't heard of that, though I know there's often a dash used before the citation of a quote in English. I used to think that's what the en dash is for, but that was incorrect. 😬

I guess I'd probably use the tilde (~) for that purpose, since it tends to signal approximation.

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @thedoctor @paul Yeah, it might be that it means the same thing in English, it's an old typographical newspapery thing, if you go on to any article on nrk.no for example every article is littered with them. I would guess they used the - since it was a stencil that they have a lot of in the newspaper business back in the day, so it was something that was easy to use that way rather than ~ which they probably didn't have as many types for.
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @thedoctor @paul

Makes sense, I don't think there was a tilde in the case of movable type I got to play with in one of my classes last semester…

Show threadthedoctorJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul Yes I just use hyphens for all this.
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@thedoctor @paul

Perfectly fine. Don't use hyphens for em dashes, though. ;)

Two hyphens is the minimum I will accept in the place of an em dash—at least that's common enough due to people not knowing how to type the real thing. One hyphen is just completely wrong. XD

Show threadthedoctorJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul I'm not sure myself. I'll try out if Hugo markdown includes facilities for this.
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@thedoctor @paul

Huh, it might.

I usually use Linux's compose key (compose+ hyphen hyphen hyphen) or Colemak's internationalization layer (rightalt+shift+hyphen) to type it. On Windows it was rightalt+(0 1 5 1) [the numbers in parentheses are typed in sequence on a numpad or possibly the top row).

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025

@amin @thedoctor @paul

mine makes ± with that combo – seems to be AltGr n for me and — is altGr i :)

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025

@amin @thedoctor @paul

Wow, I was thinking we don't use emdashes in norwegian, until I found this page,

So I learned somethinng new today, it's what we call "Thought dash" in Norwegian (tankestrek) it's used some times on both sides of a thought, the same way that one uses commas, so I'm not quite sure why there is this additional thing for it.

It's like you said for English also used for the extremeties of ranges, and for values, where it replaces 0 øre (kind of the Norwegian equivalent of cents) so if something costs 10,00 kr you would just replace it with 10,--

https://sprakradet.no/godt-og-korrekt-sprak/rettskriving-og-grammatikk/tegn/tankestrek/

Tankestrek - Språkrådet

Tankestreken (–) er lengre enn bindestreken (-) og må ikke blandes sammen med den.

Språkrådet
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @thedoctor @paul

So I learned somethinng new today, it's what we call "Thought dash" in Norwegian (tankestrek) it's used some times on both sides of a thought, the same way that one uses commas, so I'm not quite sure why there is this additional thing for it.

Yes! Em dashes can often be used in the same place commas would be, for parenthetical information.

I would find it clearer than commas when the sentence already has commas in it for other reasons—it helps avoid getting the two mixed up. Em dashes also tend to provide more emphasis around the phrase/clause than commas do.

It's like you said for English also used for the extremeties of ranges, and for values, where it replaces 0 øre (kind of the Norwegian equivalent of cents) so if something costs 10,00 kr you would just replace it with 10,--

Em dashes can be used to replace omitted characters like that (usually two em dashes back to back), but it's a more historical use and I don't see that today. Where I've seen it used like that is books where a character or place name is written like "M——" to for whatever reason avoid writing out the whole thing.

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @thedoctor @paul Ah for money values we use ,-- all the time at home, it's everywhere in stores, but mostly on hand written price signs, to the extent that you could almost say that ,-- just has become a shorthand to say money ;)
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @thedoctor @paul

Those look like hyphens, not em dashes, though? Or it could be you're just typing it that way. :)

And yeah, iirc I think something like /- was often written in India for rupees… (I could be a bit off).

₹ is the actual character for rupees.

Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @thedoctor @paul

Yeah I'm seeing /- used at the end of some money amounts on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_rupee but with no explanation…

Indian rupee - Wikipedia

Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @thedoctor @paul

This seems to be claiming "/-" means follows a whole rupee amount with no paisa (like cents in USD). https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Rupee-symbol-and

Of course I don't think I ever actually saw paisa in circulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_paisa

It was 60 rupees per USD when we left and I think it's 80 now, so paisa wouldn't have much value. Then again I've seen 100 rupiah (Indonesia) coins, and that was 14,000 to the USD (at least at the time, it may have shifted).

Is the Rupee symbol ₹ and /-?

Answer (1 of 2): It is only ₹, if your talking about INR. We write /- after sums of money that are an integral multiple of the rupee. E.g., ₹2,449/-. If there are some “paisas” in the sum, follow it with a decimal point and the number of paisas. E.g., ₹157.35. Needless to say, if there are fewer...

Quora
Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @thedoctor @paul yeah it seems like the same thing that we do with them, just that they use slash instead of comma :)
Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @thedoctor @paul Yeah, it's just because I didn't know the incantation so I just used double hyphen for an endash ususally its' ,– so if something costs 10 nok it's 10,–
Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @thedoctor @paul the – is just a standin for 00 that is a lot easier to write with a marker :p
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@paul @thedoctor

Specifically how I used it then was for parenthetical information. In other words, you can use em dashes any time you might otherwise put parentheses around a phrase. Em dashes are essentially a meaningful pause; I would usually use em dashes in transcription of spoken dialogue instead of parentheses, as I believe it better represents how the words were actually spoken, while parentheses feel more technical and are used in written communication.

You can also use one em dash in places you might otherwise put a semicolon (;) or a colon (:), where I also see it as more natural and less formal feeling. In that case the em dash does tend to imply a very direct connection between the two halves, and usually the second one is shorter, perhaps just one clause at most.

Speaking of transcribing dialogue, I would use an em dash to signify a line being cut off or interrupted in the middle:

"The reports are on your—"

"That's fine, that's fine, but where is the coffee?"

In contrast, I'd use an ellipsis to represent a sentence trailing off, intentionally left incomplete or open-ended.

"But I wanted to go to the water park today…"

Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@paul @thedoctor

Honestly, I see proper em dash use as a sign of sophisticated and well-crafted writing/prose. :)

Show threadPaul Wilde    Jul 14, 2025
@amin @thedoctor which is precisely why they look out of place in an AI written article 😁🤣
Show threadthedoctorJul 14, 2025
@paul @amin And which is why I don't use them :o)
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@thedoctor @paul

I love me a good em dash. :)

It appears I've used 104 em dashes in the history of Musings (my personal blog). Though that figure is including the unfinished drafts, I don't feel like sorting those files out of the directory just to check this.

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul @thedoctor While for everyone the AI - siren is blaring :p
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@sotolf @paul @thedoctor

They can pry my em dashes out of my cold dead hands.

Show threadsotolfJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul @thedoctor I feel the same about the rule of three :p
Show threadthedoctorJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul Thanks for the explanation
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@thedoctor @paul

Any time. And I do mean that. ;)

Show threadthedoctorJul 14, 2025
@amin @paul Aw, I'm sure you couldn't resist explaining, even if you tried. Thanks :)
Show threadAmin, minor deity of the legume realmJul 14, 2025

@thedoctor @paul

You know me so well.

Show threadR.L. Dane    🍵 Jul 14, 2025

@paul @amin

lol, so great that you called them on it!