this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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You know, use of long dash is the same kind of tell as an image having 6 fingers. Not impossible to find in human interactions but generally very rare, especially in online conversation. (I'm not even sure if my phone can do a long dash, just these fellows: ---).
Emdashes might also be a sign that the commenter is a nerd
Yeah, or just someone that has read books before...
same thing, nerd
Oh, that's me--I'm the exception! I use them all the time. Blame autism, not AI.
I use the em-dash a lot. It's not just about the presence of one, the issue is that LLMs know they exist but don't know where they go. It's sort of like a semicolon, which goes where neither a comma nor a period feel right. An em-dashes simply goes where neither comma nor period nor semicolon feels right
Edit: I should clarify, that's simply how I use them. I'm not smart enough with words to know stuff like "parenthetical clauses" or w/e. Point being, AI just throws them in like they're sentence enhancers
On my keyboard, I just click the button on the bottom left to see punctuation, and then long-press the hyphen
Single em dashes can almost always be used interchangeably with semicolons—they typically separate independent clauses without a conjunction.
Paired em dashes—used to demarcate parenthetical expressions—can be replaced by commas, but not by semicolons.
It has less to do with what feels right and more to do with the mechanics of the sentence. There is a good bit of wiggle room, figuratively speaking, in deciding whether to use commas or paired em dashes—likewise, whether to use a single em dash or a semicolon is almost entirely a stylistic choice. But I feel like the way you explained it is a bit misleading to people still learning the difference.
An em dash can also be used to delineate an abrupt break in the direction or structure of a sentence or dialogue in a way that commas or semicolons simply—fuck, I just shit my pants.
Not trying to be a pedant, just sharing what I've learned over the years.
I feel like generally a good way to summarize it is that em dashes can be used basically anywhere there would be a pause in natural conversation. You pause to include some content, you switch topics, etc. It's fairly intuitive.
Well em-dashes can be used in place of other punctuation that is typically used to denote parenthetical information — such as commas and parentheses — but it also has other uses. Similar to a semicolon it can also be used when changing the idea of a sentence — it's versatile and often an overlooked and underutilized piece of punctuation. Additionally, when you have multiple parenthenthical levels, such as this which is commonly placed within commas — or parentheses — which can be overused, it allows you to segment different layers of parenthetical information.
i always thought that em-dashes were used instead of commas whenever
An em dash — when used properly — is perfectly fine, but a little academic. iOS will do one automatically with two hyphens and a space.
Lemmy markdown
which is better than Reddit markdown in some ways, but worse in others
will automatically do a similar conversion, except it takes three hyphens instead of two (two hyphens gets you an en dash). It's nice, but also unfortunate because it messes up people's muscle memory since using only two for it mimics what was customary when writing in ASCII, on mechanical typewriters, etc.
This is a bad take. I use em dashes if I feel it's called for. It's just proper grammar. We probably shouldn't be making people dumb down the way they write so as to not be mistaken for AI.
Read some books, you'll see that it's used all of the time.
I use dashes all the time, but em-dashes? I don't even know how to type those. I guess I could long-press the dash on my phone and select it, but... why?
Because people have their own styles of writing, and some people like the way they look/the rhythm they provide a sentence or paragraph.
I'm not kidding when I say to read some books. They're everywhere in actual literature.
no no, you misunderstand. I'm not talking about the verbal flourish of dashes for interjection - I use those all the time, in this very sentence - I'm specifically talking about producing the specific Unicode character (—) instead of just using the normal ASCII dash (-). the only way I can make the actual em-dash character is by long-pressing. if I do -- or ---, it's just a sequence of normal dash glyphs for me.
Because that's how typography works? Why do you capitalize the first letter in each of your sentences?
I actually don't. :) it's the first thing I disable on my phone. I only capitalize "I" specifically, and proper nouns.
again though, my issue is one with producing the Unicode character of the specific em-dash glyph. maybe some phones automatically convert dashes to em-dashes based on context but I personally wouldn't know how it's done.