Spyke
lemmy.world

As a person that has been using en-dash and em-dash for years, this is annoying me as hell that they are used as a telltale sign of AI slop. I'm just a typography nerd, not AI!

115

Despite that, let's not let billionaire parasites dictate our voices—I will type as I please. They'll have to pry the em dash from my cold, dead hands.

6
sreply
piefed.world

I apologize for my error! I will avoid using em-dashes in the future. Would you like to delve deeper into other tropes of AI writing? As of my most recent update, other tropes of AI writing include the following:

  1. Lists
  2. Surface level falsities
  3. Use of em-dashes
  4. Inability to find sources for information
  5. Repetition
  6. Using em-dashes
  7. Internal contradictions
  8. Uncanny positivity and encouragement

Any of these would be a great trope of A.I. writing — Would you like to discuss any of the listed items?

111

It's short for EnorMous Dash. Not to be confused with the ENormous Dash.

11
papalonianreply
lemmy.world

Is that Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt kissing? This had to have come out in like 2014 and everyone must have lost their minds

7

2016

Damn, that was actually my first guess, but I thought the JLaw love had mostly faded by then.

1

it's all the minus sign to me, I don't get it at all

4

It's crazy that this is an indicator of AI now. I remember when Word would automatically turn -- into the single long dash. Like when you would write something--such as a thought within a thought--like this.

26
TheEntityreply
lemmy.world

For the record, you've used en-dash here, not em-dash. These are used mostly for number/date ranges. Em-dash is even longer: — vs – vs -

7

it's almost like the distinction barely matters - i mean, how many people would notice the length of that dash if this wasn't already a discussion about them?

7

Me when I engage in em-dashes, rules of three, and promotional language — it expertly sets off sensitive AI language generation detection methods, cleverly appearing to other users that I'm using a Large Language Model myself.

15
Patchesreply
ttrpg.network

A dash that is twice as long as a regular dash.

It's an odd character that doesn't exist on any keyboard but AI uses it everywhere.

The only time you likely encountered it outside AI is in Microsoft Word. Word replaces 2 dashes (-) with an Em—Dash.

5

German Microsoft makes them automatically. If you write word - word it automatically lengthens the - to a — but if you write it like word-word it doesn’t—and LLMs don’t put spaces in between

2
sreply
piefed.world

Is there a more common epithet?

11

You mean the song "Stan" by Eminem, where he talks about a guy named Stan who is a fan of something (in this case a famous person)? "[term] Stan" has been a thing for a couple years now. It was a song about an obsessive fan who doesn't understand parasocial relationships, but the term has grown to a much broader usage.

Don't be such a Stan Stan, sheesh 🙄

5

Maybe you should consider that language isn't fixed and words change meanings all the time, especially recently coined "internet" words.

3
shneancyreply
lemmy.world

langauge can mean whatever we want, stan wasn't even a word 10 years ago

5

"stan" to mean "obsessive fan" hasn't entered the vernacular usage of the internet too long ago. the meaning of words change, langauges are fluid, the living almost entity of a language does not care you dislike how the word is used, if it catches on it'll keep happening until you accept it or grow numb

3