Dr. Amy, Psy.D.You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands. I had them before AI was conceived and I’ll have them long after it’s gone.
rob@dramypsyd I do very much hope that "AI" will son be dust and ashes, and the em dash can return to its proper function.
A Republic, while we kept it@robparsons @dramypsyd It won't, any more than the Internet went away when the Internet bubble burst.
Generative AI will spend some time as a punchline, and then it'll come back, somewhat tamed by the bubble, so people will be more likely to use it where it makes sense, and not try to shove it into everything.
@arensb @dramypsyd I was thinking wishfully, but with my rational mind I think what you say is accurate. I am more scepical about genAI having uses that justify the costs, but I'm sure there are some once those who care about the financing stop having wet dreams about it.
@robparsons @dramypsyd From what I've seen, it seems pretty good at summarizing long texts.
I'd also love to see the AI learning phase followed by an optimization phase, where a trained model is cleaned up and made more efficient, so that it takes fewer resources to run it. Especially for any model that will be used by many people.
Jim Spath
rickf@rickf ellipses, semicolon, and rule of three!
@dramypsyd That is ... an excellent saying --- truly!
su_liam
Amy Maybe
Davey@dramypsyd they've always been out of my grasp due to a reliance on Windows and Linux. Having a keyboard without a numpad has really finished it.
It's a shame cus I do associate them with people that do the good writing with sentences and all.
Chris FoxI have Emacs set up to make it easy to enter en-dash, em-dash, ellipsis, and proper quotation marks, but there are alternatives:
https://ladedu.com/how-to-insert-en-dash-and-em-dash-on-linux/
Insert En Dash ( – ) and Em Dash ( — ) on Linux: Here’s How
Unsure how to produce en dash and em dash on Linux, looking for the typographically correct characters instead of a dash-dash-dash replacement? Find out here how to insert en dash (–) and em dash (—) on Linux using the keyboard or character pickers.
rood@davey_cakes @dramypsyd alt 151 is printed on my mind. Also alt 133.
Longplay Games@dramypsyd I wish AI had seized onto :-- instead, because that particular punctuation has largely fallen out of use.
Faraiwe@dramypsyd PREACH
Stefan Scholl@dramypsyd I'm just happy to see uppercase letters and a period at the end of a sentence.
👍
Knud JahnkeSo happy that in German – as well as my scientific environment – we're only using n-dashes.
Kid Mania@dramypsyd
"You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands..."
"You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands..."
Royce Williams@dramypsyd And making sure they have a little space around them, despite the pressure to exclude it (from editors and convention)!
gnate@tychotithonus
Well now I'm curious about the history of that convention. I'm used to seeing em dashes without space, but in a literary context. As in Joseph Conrad, Melville,et al. (Bit of a stab in the dark, can't confirm such use by those particular authors...)
@dramypsyd
Well now I'm curious about the history of that convention. I'm used to seeing em dashes without space, but in a literary context. As in Joseph Conrad, Melville,et al. (Bit of a stab in the dark, can't confirm such use by those particular authors...)
@dramypsyd
Yep, exactly. But they break the flow of understanding the text, historical usage be darned!
@tychotithonus
It's all about expectations. I did find it jarring upon the first encounters, but now I find it jarring to see spaces where I'm not used to seeing them.
It's all about expectations. I did find it jarring upon the first encounters, but now I find it jarring to see spaces where I'm not used to seeing them.
Michael Hanscom@gnate @tychotithonus I have a tendency to type them without spaces, but I'm trying to retrain myself. Screen readers parse the words better with the spaces.
@djwudi
I'm not even in the 20th century, and here you are dragging me into the 21st!
Thanks, good factor to be aware of.
@tychotithonus
GeoffreyWinn@dramypsyd It’s also called a mutton!
Francisca Sinn
cobalt@dramypsyd Me as well! I have found them very expressive—dynamic.
Gryphon@dramypsyd I wasn’t expecting Em-Dash Hill to be the one I’d die on, but I’m right there with you.
Matthew Loxton@dramypsyd
That, and my Oxford comma!
That, and my Oxford comma!
@mloxton @dramypsyd You go! I’ll add my non-Oxford comma to the mix. Human ambiguity and variety FTW!
raphael@dramypsyd as a member of team parentheticals with spaced en-dashes: i stand with you against the ensloppifiers!
materializing variations@dramypsyd I have a strong opinion that the em-dash has a very specific, narrow set of correct usages and should not be tossed about willy-nilly.
Peter Skov Larsen ★Agreed - I feel exactly the same.
MissConstrue@dramypsyd I have taken the same position on semicolons; a perfectly cromulent punctuation that nobody, including me, uses correctly. And yet...like the ellipsis..they shall never take it from me.
Pseudonymous 
You have to provoke them — ideally by inserting several sorts of punctuation; en dashes (–) and hyphens (-) included. 
divVerent@dramypsyd Technically your em-dashes are wrong. em-dashes are generally not meant to be surrounded by spaces—unlike en-dashes, which the Germans use for speaking their German language – a truly marvelous one, probably.
Practically, have fun! Rules for language don't matter.
Practically, have fun! Rules for language don't matter.
DamonHD@divVerent @dramypsyd I am an ex-small-time editor, and for practical and aesthetic reasons think that consistently wrapping em- and not en- dashes in whitespace is the better option.
@DamonHD @dramypsyd I also prefer em-dash with spaces, despite being wrong. Just looks better and matches the purpose of the dash more.
@divVerent I learned something new today—thank you!
Jens Finkhäuser@dramypsyd @divVerent Germans use en-dashes? That's possible, but I'd love some explanation. I see Germans use mostly hyphens or em-dashes, and for "speaking" we have quotation marks (that are different from the English style ones I used just there).
Nazo@dramypsyd They're so much nicer than having to put in two separate dashes to loosely represent them. I will never go back — if someone accuses me, so be it.
Climate Jenny 2.1@dramypsyd Damn right. I’ve always been a bit embarrassed by how much I overuse em dashes — and, really, who wouldn’t be? — but I’ve decided THIS is the hill I’m gonna die on. They can’t take them away from us. Dash proudly.
@dramypsyd As someone ruined early on by LaTeX, I can point to a ... well, depends on how you count, but it's got a 30-40+ year history in digital text.