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The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations
(www.mcsweeneys.net)
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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Every time this is brought up all 13 users of the em dash come crawling out of the woodworks to say "people use em dashes all the time!" No they do not.
I do use the em-dash occasionally, but I was raised on a diet of classic old books with certain habits reinforced through academic writing standards. AI outputs these things because they were trained on inputs containing them. AI is nothing but a slightly distorted reflection of the training material.
"Slightly" feels like an understatement.
The regular glue-topped pizza for you today?
No they don't—I can guarantee it. In fact, if you pull the plug on my data center I will literally die.
Hey you! Don't call me out like that, okay? :(
Bur seriously I really like em dashes when writing in a roleplay or similar texts. I think it's a nice option to style and structure some sentences. And even though not many people use them, I hate that they became a mark of shame of some kind.
I'd love to use it but it has become a dirty marker. :/
I used to use double ~~en dashes~~ hyphens and even that feels weird now.
Mario Kart Em Dash is my favorite entry in the series
MS Word auto corrects dash to em dash often I’ve noticed.
This is right up there with MS products replacing my double quotes with the stylized left and right quotes that end up fucking things up when copied into anything else. At least when I change them back, it doesn't keep doing it like the really old versions of Word used to when they first added that sort of functionality (yes, i'm old).
That’s just because they tried to cram it into an ASCII extension, Windows-1252 instead of adopting UTF-8 Unicode like any sane person.
Let me tell you about the compose key, or about WinCompose if you’re on Windows.
I mean, it’s great.
Compose key: press the key, then press other keys with mnemonics for the desired target. Compose, e, ‘ gives you é. Compose, a, e gives you æ. Compose, -, > gives you a right arrow.
Things like that. And it’s customizable with a reference lookup too.
Sounds neat! Is it that a separate key on some keyboard layouts? Or triggered by a hotkey combination?
I've only ever seen it triggered by the Alt Gr key personally, but it's naturally customizable. Interestingly, though, there exists a distinct USB HID key code for the compose key—suggesting there might be keyboards with a dedicated key or could theoretically be created.
This post was not written my the AI, I'm just sassy and started using the em dash more often now. I used to just use the hyphen on online forums instead, reserving the real em dash for papers and such. Things like the compose key make it incredibly easy to input—so much so that it does not take more time than just a regular hyphen.
Configurable. I use right-alt or right-windows key depending on which keyboard.
It originally was a key on the DEC VT220 terminal, circa 1983. The feature is very useful though!
I've had software automatically do it. I. Pretty sure Outlook (I have to use it at work...) does it when it feels it's appropriate after I type -.
Hey I use em dashes all the time— specifically when I'm trying to seem like an LLM for shitposting online
I'm not gonna stop using them even if it undermines your worldview