YOU WILL PRY MY EM DASH FROM MY COLD DEAD—AND LIFELESS—HANDS - ThreadSky

tkingfisher.com • 14 days ago

YOU WILL PRY MY EM DASH FROM MY COLD DEAD—AND LIFELESS—HANDS

Just saw a post where someone said that use of em dashes (—) was a giveaway that you're using AI for writing. Uh, no. It could just mean you like to use em dashes.

Comments

kshannon617.bsky.social•14 days ago

Em dashes are how people know it's really my writing! I'm not capable of doing a whole page--or even a paragraph, really--without them!

srleeauthor.com•13 days ago

Same!

youmaywhistle.bsky.social•14 days ago

Look, people who say that - who do you think the plagiarism software is plagiarizing?

SO much text online was written by neurodiverse axe grinders. "GenAI" was trained on material chock full of writing tics and VERY specific personal idioms.

youmaywhistle.bsky.social•14 days ago

I have seen several anecdotes at this point about students being accused by plagiarism "checkers," and it goes away sometimes with as little as changing a single word choice - the same kind of highfalutin' choices I routinely make.

I am the opposite of charmed by all this.

peronelle.bsky.social•14 days ago

Agreed. I was so proud to put one in a poem earlier.

melancholerical.bsky.social•14 days ago

Argh my pet peeve, em-dashes without spaces before and after. 😂
*twitches in UK academic journal house style

k8johnsonauthor.bsky.social•14 days ago

I’ve had publishers add the spaces when I leave them out, remove them when I include them, put them before and/or after… and always, always replace them with their own special (completely identical) em dashes. So I just let the copy editor enjoy themselves now.

melancholerical.bsky.social•14 days ago

Replacing em-dashes: I would assume it has something to do with the actual type setting process. But just guessing. I know doing em-dash by double dash (--) in Word needs to be replaced so it shows as a solid line in the set type.

But yeah, spaces are often down to house style. 😅

adrienneleigh.bsky.social•14 days ago

Properly speaking, em-dashes should have a hair space, sixth space, or thin space (depending on the typeface) before and after, but failing that, no space at all looks better than a standard-width word space.

adrienneleigh.bsky.social•14 days ago

A word space is WAY too wide for setting em-dashes—it elevates them visually as if they are short words all by themselves, which is bad for comprehension—no matter what your style guide says!

kingdomembracer.bsky.social•14 days ago

I love an em dash!

clearspark.bsky.social•14 days ago

alt + 0151, baby

mysticprayer.bsky.social•14 days ago

Me too.

genevievecogman.bsky.social•14 days ago

Hear, hear.

monishywriter.bsky.social•13 days ago

starshadw.bsky.social•14 days ago

See, I don't like them because they are all up in the business of the letters before and after them. Like, give us some personal space, please! (It's a visual thing for me, I don't actually have anything against them as punctuation).

mwfrancis.bsky.social•14 days ago

I use em-dashes in frikkin EMAIL ffs
Nobody--and I mean nobody--will get me to stop using them!

theclapp.bsky.social•14 days ago

Icydk: you can do them on iPhone by long-pressing hyphen

docbohn.bsky.social•14 days ago

Apparently someone failed to notice that MS Word auto-changes two dashes to an em dash.

deanbooth.bsky.social•14 days ago

I did a lot of work on Nathaniel Hawthorne—; he often would pair an em dash with a semicolon!

cassandrahartwell.bsky.social•14 days ago

He wrote gorgeous stories, was a maximalist for punctuation--and looked like THIS. Be still my heart!

deanbooth.bsky.social•14 days ago

I was the "textual editor" for several of Hawthorne’s unpublished works and all his letters. My job was to ensure the text matched his manuscripts. Great job!

cassandrahartwell.bsky.social•14 days ago

Ooo, I'm jealous. I've done my fair share of digging in old manuscripts, but no one ever paid me to do it.

deanbooth.bsky.social•14 days ago

Probably 90% of my manuscript reading was from copies of microfiche and 10% originals. But I did get to wander around the university library looking for NH letters in books — found a previously unknown letter to President Polk!

cherijoy.bsky.social•14 days ago

I don’t think I could write without em dashes—at least not in any meaningful way!

rootwyrm.com•14 days ago

I—LIKE MANY WRITERS—SUPPORT APPROPRIATE USE OF EMDASH!

tkingfisher.com•14 days ago

Hey @kbspangler.com now you can use “Do you want them to think you’re an AI?” in the comments.

tkingfisher.com•14 days ago

(But seriously, if I go more than a few days without a post of either an em dash or a parenthesis, do a wellness check.)

frillsquid.bsky.social•14 days ago

being hooked on dashes, parentheses, footnotes, and other ways of complicating your sentence structure is extremely Terry Pratchett-feeling

lonelysandperson.bsky.social•13 days ago

First of all, how dare you.
(GNU Terry Pratchett)

informitch.bsky.social•14 days ago

Days? Hours.

(My fave soshmeeds trick: Using a semicolon to separate clauses, independent or not exactly—in between em-dashes.)

The em-dash is the only glyph (hah!) I know the Windows keyboard code for: Alt-0151.

nocatsnomasters.bsky.social•14 days ago

Semicolons aren't the answer. Semicolons are the question. "Yes!" is the answer.

sitnstitch.bsky.social•14 days ago

Parenthesis and ellipsis FOREVER. (No objection to em dashes, they just aren’t MY jam)

keigan-of-sweden.bsky.social•12 days ago

I never figured out how to achieve an em dash on a physical keyboard and my phone keyboard doesn't have 'em either so I'm stuck with en dashes for life.

atomkatze.bsky.social•14 days ago

I tend to overuse ellipses, myself....

rahirah.bsky.social•12 days ago

I have broken myself of ellipses; the semicolon is my master now.

pamadams.bsky.social•14 days ago

More than a few days? It might be more than a few minutes for me.

frymaster.127001.org•14 days ago

OK, but serious question, how do you do them? I'm not sure - and I've looked - how to type them on either my PC or my phone.

If I used MS Word then it autoconverts hypthens to dashes, but otherwise it'd be hyphens, not dashes.

cassandrahartwell.bsky.social•14 days ago

I use the MacOS Emoji & Symbols command, often found on the Edit menu. It opens a window that you can use to search special characters of all kinds by name. Just type "em dash." In Windows, look for Special Characters, Emoji Panel, or Character Map, or memorize the Alt codes.

acciopeaches.bsky.social•13 days ago

As a longtime lover of the emdash (but also a lazy individual), I used to just default to a dash, even though it was wrong. However, happy days! I finally learned the keyboard shortcut for mac: Hold down the 'option', 'shift', and the '-' (dash) keys. No more stopping to search out the symbol!

ulidig.bsky.social•14 days ago

On Android, long tap the hyphen to see the other options: - — _ – ·

Hyphen, em-dash, underscore, en-dash, dot.

riderius.bsky.social•14 days ago

I am old and use the convention from typewriter days--two hyphens in a row = Em-dash. Also does not break flow. I use em a lot as well 8-)

candied-citrus.bsky.social•14 days ago

On computer, if you have a numpad on your keyboard, then the ALT code ALT+0151 gives you an em dash (ALT+0150 gives you the en dash). On mobile, I think it varies, but—on my phone, at least—if you hold down on hyphen on the keyboard, it should open up a menu of options and em dash is there.

frymaster.127001.org•14 days ago

ah, cheers, that works for my mobile. I'm unlikely to remember for the PC, alas (I've also found it on the windows+. menu but that's too fiddly for e.g. the social medias)

candied-citrus.bsky.social•14 days ago

No worries, I'm glad that worked for you on mobile. ^^ And happy to help share the love for em dashes.

ghostingdani.bsky.social•14 days ago

On Windows it's Ctrl+Alt+Minus Sign on the number pad–it only works on that key though, the normal hyphen won't do it.

mtbotany.bsky.social•14 days ago

The LLMs only learn from us. It is not like they ingested a style guide. They are doing what real people do in a cut up layering of photographs way. Though it is interesting that they are not like robots in fiction, following perfect rules of grammar with the tell being they are too perfect.

lonelysandperson.bsky.social•13 days ago

Seriously. I regularly use em-dashes (...assuming an environment that auto switches -- for —), parentheticals, and semicolons in everyday communications.
Don't call me an AI just because I don't type like some Xitter nocaps nopuncs reply guy.

averybooks.bsky.social•14 days ago

parenthesis is my personal favorite, but I favor the em dash just as much.

sunshinejenwrites.bsky.social•14 days ago

😂

saxxon.bsky.social•14 days ago

My software auto combining two regular dashes into em dashes: 😈

asofel.bsky.social•14 days ago

I use ellipsis for the same way… incorrectly for sure… but I can’t seem to stop

kbspangler.com•14 days ago

Thank goodness I was running low on ammo

bolognaamputation.bsky.social•14 days ago

Reminds me of this solo game dev I enjoy, who got accused of using AI art, and his response was essentially "It's not AI, I just hide the hands because I'm not very good :( "

from-my-bookshelf.bsky.social•14 days ago

💯💯💯

from-my-bookshelf.bsky.social•14 days ago

Or should I say 💯—💯—💯

camillahoel.bsky.social•14 days ago

In this case retweet does equal endorsement.

fergus.oolong.co.uk•14 days ago

For me - who has no em dash key - it's usually a sign that I'm writing on Medium or some other thing that automatically changes ' - ' into an em dash

boxofpenguin.bsky.social•13 days ago

I don't think they're common on physical keyboard layouts, and I suspect that most enthusiasts either memorize the Alt-key sequence, use tools to insert special characters, or rely on automations that correct "--" to "—"

This is what I have to do on my phone keyboard 😅 Worth it

lfillingham.bsky.social•14 days ago

Love an en dash, em dashes are better than hyphen hyphen.

erinbowbooks.bsky.social•14 days ago

We could form a support society -- like, Hi, I'm Erin, and I'm addicted to em-dashes.

nekrotzar.bsky.social•14 days ago

Many systems — Slack, for example — will automatically convert consecutive hyphens to an em dash. On mobile keyboards — iOS, for example — typing an em dash is simple.

The original post — attributing em dashes to AI — is some bullshit.

wumpus-cave.net•14 days ago

The premise would imply that LLMs were trained on data that had a lot of em dashes already. I don't see that being true unless the Internet was already using them a lot. I suppose the data could have corrected double dashes to em dash, but it's a stretch to assume that.

crimsonruari.bsky.social•14 days ago

An author in a panel I was in today spoke against em-dashes and I still bought their book, which I think makes me a great bipartisan thinker.

lauraannegilman.bsky.social•14 days ago

MY COLD DEAD—AND LIFELESS—HANDS WILL FIGHT TO KEEP MY EM DASHES.

morganza.bsky.social•13 days ago

Will I be lynched if I mention -- even in passing -- that I set off my em dashes with spaces?

biggesttaco.bsky.social•13 days ago

It’s about to get handled Chicago style!

catkimbriel.bsky.social•14 days ago

AND MY AXE!

kithrup.bsky.social•14 days ago

Why do her cold dead hands have your axe?

catkimbriel.bsky.social•14 days ago

WE WILL DEFEND EM DASHES TO THE GRAVE AND BEYOND!

kithrup.bsky.social•14 days ago

YES BUT WHY DOES SHE HAVE YOUR AXE WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DEFEND EM DASHES WITH?!?!?!?!?!??!

catkimbriel.bsky.social•14 days ago

I ALSO HAVE A SWORD AND A CROSSBOW!

kithrup.bsky.social•14 days ago

Oh whew! I was worried!

camestrosf.bsky.social•14 days ago

—} m-dash crossbow

mnemex.bsky.social•14 days ago

— will forever remain buried in my memory as how you quickly and reliably type em-dashes into html-enabled blogging sites. FOREVER.

handle.invalid•14 days ago

—

mnemex.bsky.social•13 days ago

Was not supported in all browsers, back in the day. I did not say this was currently useful knowledge.

handle.invalid•13 days ago

Oh, thanks, I didn’t know that. I may have confused some people back then, then.

somnomania.bsky.social•13 days ago

em dashes and semicolons, my beloveds!

shademar.bsky.social•14 days ago

And I suspect said hands would fight back instead of their state.

Also –– yes.

benny-g.bsky.social•14 days ago

TIL Emily Dickinson was an AI.

ricevermicelli.bsky.social•14 days ago

And -- Mary Shelley!

pirategirljack.bsky.social•14 days ago

Oh no, Emily Dickinson is a robot

davsionnach.bsky.social•14 days ago

EM DASHES ARE A SIGN—MAYBE THE HALLMARK—OF PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT PREVALENT IN THE ADHD BRAIN—AND MANY CREATIVE TYPES—NOT AN AUTOMATIC SIGN OF RESOURCE BURNING FAKE BRAINS

kenaizawa.bsky.social•13 days ago

I love em dashes!

spacevalkyries.bsky.social•14 days ago

how else am I supposed to stitch the ADHD tangents into a sentence (other than uses parenthesis, of course)???

gamermom742.bsky.social•14 days ago

This whole thread of conversations tells me that I need to take up em dashes. (I'm already a prolific user of parenthetical statements)

gwenda.bsky.social•14 days ago

Same

gre7g.com•14 days ago

I'm not changing my writing style for trends, and I sure as hell won't do it to "not look like A.I.".

querdcast.bsky.social•13 days ago

Spacing

cuprohastes.bsky.social•13 days ago

It most likely means:
1: You installed LanguageTools or Grammarly
2: You own a Mac (option+- or -- to get an em dash)

tiffhudson.com•14 days ago

Pointing at the em-dash is the most Flat-Earther Turing Test of all the Flat-Earther Turing Tests. It's liking pointing to the turnip tied onto Connie Booth's nose and shouting "Witch!"

levostregc.bsky.social•14 days ago

Did somebodye telle Emily about thys?

goodgirlgang.bsky.social•14 days ago

they don't exist on keyboards in the US, so that's probably why they thought that.

you have to like, go out of your way, memorize a four-key code, to type them here

faerytaleonfire.bsky.social•14 days ago

Most writing programs will automatically turn "--" into an em-dash. The ones that don't have a setting you can turn on to do it. I use em-dashes all the time and have no idea what the key code for them is.

goodgirlgang.bsky.social•10 days ago

I did not know that, and I suspect most people who're thinking it's a sign of bots don't know that either

I suspect it doesn't work on most social media, lemme test it though --

goodgirlgang.bsky.social•10 days ago

yeah, doesn't seem to work here at least, so people who do most of their writing on online forums likely don't know about that trick

justhere4coffee.bsky.social•14 days ago

They don't exist on keyboards in most places, that's no excuse for not using them! Memorizing the codes is a time-honored tradition 😂

megaforte84.bsky.social•14 days ago

It's also not like a bunch of apps and programs don't have autoformatting replacement instead anyway.

What's next, only AI uses Word or Scrivener without wading into settings to turn "smart quotes" off?

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