this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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me_irl
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All posts need to have the same title: me_irl it is allowed to use an emoji instead of the underscore _
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also me when people accuse me of being ai slop for using em dashes just because big tech trained their models by stealing authors work.
I like to use em, but I'm too lazy to type them so I just use two regular dashes (--) which I guess I haven't seen an LLM do yet.
Its actually wild to me that people who use LLMs don't edit the output to make it look like it was not generated.
For me, the greatest giveaways are the emojis and bad formatting.
iOS automatically converts two endashes into an emdash for whatever that’s worth
People who don’t know—🌝
People who know—🌚
just swap them out with semicolons; no one knows how they're supposed to work anyway
Semicolons should separate related ideas; they should work as independent sentences though.
Em dashes--contrary to how most people use them--are for asides or supplementary information. I also see them used to show a conclusion--a direct response to a prior statement that doesn't seem appropriate to put in a new sentence.
Punctuation: gotta love it.
Thank goodness I was raised where etc. I was; feel like I have a handle on it.
But who knows—maybe I’m imperfect with them!
(howdid I doozie here^ pls)
Edit: Okay, just read it—your comment, I mean—and I used v2 of your em dash, so here’s v1 :)
Best choice is to switch out the em dashes for parentheses ( even where that doesn't make any sense.
yeah, emoji or em dashes will get you hanged around these parts :)
I sometimes use semicolons when I realise I have been using too many commas and I don't feel like breaking up into multiple sentences. So, kinda like a bigger comma.
I understand that makes it wrong, though.
semicolons have commas included, friend.
sorry, replied to the wrong comment
There was a comment that was a list of 15 items and some chud called it AI slop. Because it was an organized list?
Honestly, making a list feels easier for me as a markdown user, than having to put 2 spaces at the end of every line.
em dashes are typographical faffery and have always been (in my opinion) a marker of writers who take themselves, and the surface level of their style, far too serious.
just use commas, my friend
em dashes, en dashes, and commas have different meanings and uses
aren't all of them "do a short pause"?
For a speaker/listener, yes. But for a reader, it has additional value.
I don't remember where I first read em dashes, but there were times when I felt like something didn't quite match any of the others I usually use ^[parentheses, colons (inline or list-starters), semicolons] and ended up with a feeling that putting a dash over there made sense.
I also didn't know the terminologies for these different kinds of dashes, when I started using them.
no.
Just use commas, my friend
vs.
Just use commas -- my friend
It doesn't work very well.
dashes cannot always replace commas, but commas can replace dashes.
thus - commas are more powerful
thus, commas are more powerful
Amusingly enough, one use case for em dashes is a pause where a comma would be too weak — refuting your assertion.
Also, you used a hyphen.
not actually a hyphen, a minus (not that this matters to me in the slightest)
I'm sorry, but "the pause is too weak" sounds squarely in the area of faffery to me.
hyphen and minus is the same punctuation symbol in different contexts, at least how most people, including you, signify the mathematical symbol.
so… yeah. pretty clear it doesn't matter to you since you speak authoritatively about it while being incorrect
you think I don't know this - I know I don't care about it
so… you know you're wrong, but you go around correcting people? why?
Because they really feel they're right, and that's what matters — right?
it's like being an atheist and therefore not caring about the details of transsubstantiation. irrelevance.
it's interesting you would phrase your simile like that because it seems much more like being an atheist and then having a strong opinion that the miracle of transubstantiation happens in the hindgut, even though no theology calls for that.
Or being a Tesla owner and therefore not caring about democracy
It's more along the lines of the comma is too weak for the pause. Likewise, there are places where the em dash is too strong for the pause.
v2 here though?
Teaching myself to stop using the em dash has been a real pain. It helps with the flow of reading particularly when talking about technical content. I've gone back to the semicolon, sadly.
to quote david herman's michael bolton in office space:
😂😂😂❤️