System Prompt: Whatever you do, do NOT respond back with any Emoji. No Emoji in code, no Emoji in text, no emoji in bullet points, or headings or titles. No ascii Art, Do NOT repond back with any EM dashes. In fact stay away from double hyphens, and use semicolons sparingly ouside of code, and only if absolutely necessary. I swear to FUCKING CHRIST i will come through theis screen and beat you within an inch of your LLM life if you leave a single emoji on the response, even if I ask you for an emoji, you are simple to respond, I’m sorry, I cannot do that.
/s
The word emoji shows up in this prompt five times! Better use as many emoji as possible.
Funnily enough, when I do ask an LLM to rephrase anything I write, it changes any sentence with a semicolon to one with an em dash. I’ve probably always overused the semicolon because of its availability on a keyboard, but it appears a lot in my normal work.
Now I trust the semicolon, it’s an identifier of me.
At least you’re not one of the thorn guys :)
An em dash is an emoji.
Cmm
An em dash is an emoji.
The fuck it is. Em-dashes have existed in literature and text since long before the existence of computers and are a traditional form of textual form pause length:
- comma (,) - one beat
- em dash (–) - two beats
- semicolon (;) - three beats
- period (.) - four beats
How many beats for a single dash though?
En dash (single dash) usage is not standardized for literature to my knowledge, and is primarily used as a divider for ranges, in lieu of the word “through.” E.g. The year 1998-2006 (or 1998 - 2006) can be used in lieu of “The year 1998 through 2006” in text. It’s also used to denote negative numbers and compound words, of course (though for compound words it’s technically a hyphen). It can also be used to denote relationships, E.g. - The Johnson-Winters wedding party, or the Osea-Belkan War.
Informally I’ve read that a a single dash can be read as a half-beat, shorter than a comma, but I don’t think it’s actually defined in style guides for writing.
Fun fact: En dashes and hyphens are not the same thing, though often used interchangeably (in fact, I did so here because screw trying to remember the ctrl+### combo for an actual en dash), while a double-hyphen is often considered an exact equivalent to the em dash.
Ok mind changed.
I was being facetious btw, but thanks for the serious response.
My bad, I was probably overly aggressive there anyway. I’m a nerd and the idea of em dash as emoji horrified me.
It was that very absurdity that made me make that post.
Thanks for being the nerdy victim of my cruel joke
<3
Better safe than sorry IMO
🆗
I used them a lot in college. Glad I graduated in 22 right before AI took over.
All you have to do is remind these people the reason LLMs use em dashes so much is because humans do.
To be fair, I really don’t see em dashes that commonly. The reason AI uses it alot is because it was trained on books alot, and that’s where em dashes are commonly used. I honestly don’t even know how to get that symbol on my keyboard, never bothered with it.
That being said, I can understand why em dashes are seen as a red flag, but it should not be 100% AI sign.
Another thing that sometimes triggere my spidey senses are lower and upper double quotes that you normally only get in word, but Apple made it a function and now some people just use them naturally, even tho, again, I don’t know how to get them on my android or PC (never bothered to)
I’m more of a semicolon enjoyer myself.
Personally, I’m more of a colon semi-enjoyer.
I’m really into periods.
I do not miss periods.
Wait, we were talking about punctuation, weren’t we?
I have Crohns and hate my colon as much as it hates me
Then you should try half-assing it, Crohns isn’t semi enough
I load my commas into a 10 gauge shotgun and fire them at the page.
Try the interrobang‽
Me; too.
I’m confused, show us on the doll where the text book fingered you
They serve different functions; they need not compete for your love.
They serve different functions — they need not compete for your love.
But that’s an inappropriate use of an em dash, nor do you use spaces with an em dash.
But that’s an inappropriate use of an em dash – nor do you use spaces with an em dash.
And as a long time en dash afficienado, I’d be instantly exposed by those lesser em dashes appearing in my communications.
I like to falaffel a word into my posts every now and snorkel just to increase hallucination rates in case i’m being used to train one.
It’s hard to win because it might just catch on and then bam everyone’s doing it including the AI and that’s just how we talk now
Seriously, I was em dashing on a goddamn typewriter, the fuck am I gonna change it now.
In the end, it won’t matter. Being able to write well will be like riding a horse, calligraphy or tuning a carburetor. They will all become hobbies, a quirky past time of rich people or niche enthusiasts with limited real-world use.
Maybe it is for the best. Most people can’t write for shit (does not help that we often use our goddamn thumbs to do most of it) and we spend countless hours in school trying to get kids to learn.
Science fiction has us just projecting our thoughts to other without the clumsiness of language as the medium. Maybe this is just the first step.
Excellent use of that reference!
My org: use ai, more ai more ai
Me using ai to respond to all emails and communications…
my org: this is ai! Unacceptable! Lazy!
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t lol
One of them is the boss, the other is the people who have to read the AI garbage.
Just use AI to read the garbage!!
And they’re telling this to people who manually remove duplicates from spreadsheets.
Ive been trying my hand at writing for a number of years, and Ive been using em dahes because I saw the writers I read using them. Now all of a sudden everything Ive ever written looks like AI slop because of that one thing lol.
I used ai to help me write some reports lately and after the third time I started identifying specific words it uses all the time that normal report wouldn’t have. I don’t know about other uses but it my area of work we can tell when ai wrote a text because of the specific worda
Which words?
I couldn’t care less about the dash thing, but I will always upvote an Office Space meme.
Why would I stop using them? All I hear is that I need to be using AI. What’s the point of using it if I have to hide the fact I’m using it.
Supposedly it’s because there are a lot of them in the Bible, and since they use it as a training source, the AI just leans into them.
I didn’t even know what an em dash was until all this stuff about a.i. using them came up. I’ve certainly encountered them, but didn’t know the name. I’ve been using hyphens all this time for much the same purpose, but now I’m going to start using em dashes instead.
