Tf is em dash?
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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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 mean... I do. But I'm well aware of the fact that most don't. Alt code is 0151 baby. Have had it memorized for years.
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.
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.
No they don't—I can guarantee it. In fact, if you pull the plug on my data center I will literally die.
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.
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).
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 -.
Except most normal people use hyphens, and the only place I've seen dashes was in pieces of text that actually were supposed to be stylized 100% correctly - books, papers and the like. Not posts on internet forums.
I agree. On my normal keyboard I wouldn't even know how to produce an EM dash without looking it up. On my phone keyboard I can easily but that's just the intuitive UI.
I use hyphens all the time. I can't say I've noticed an EM dash outside a book, paper, or blog post (like, proper stylized blog).
It's easy on a Mac — option-shift-hyphen.
I can guarantee you that 99% of Mac users do not know about that.
Entirely possible, but then we're also talking in a thread about a subject that apparently 99% of humans don't know about either.
And easy on Linux compose+---.
But I'm the guy who types CTRL+MAJ+u202f to have thin non-breaking spaces, so I'm not sure I'm representative.
I mapped AltGr+Shift+Space to the thin non-breaking space, since it's the objectively best thousands separator. Unless it's 4 digits or in ASCII-only contexts, in which case I don't use any.
I actually don't even have compose bound to a key because I simply never have to type anything that's not in the normal UTF-8 space on my PC lol
What is "the normal UTF-8 space"?
You would like unexpected keyboard for your phone then. It supports en–dashes, em—dashes and non-breaking spaces without needing a symbol layer.
Does it permit easily to switch dictionaries and layouts? I type regularly in three different languages on my phone, that's why I use AnySoftKeyboard.
layouts is easy, but I'm afraid it does not support dictionaries, so that might be a dealbreaker for you
Why be representative when you can be exceptional? :)
I use them all the time — unlike in the article I surround them with spaces though, so I guess at least that makes me human, even if wrong.
You space the endash, not the emdash.
I just switched to a keyboard that has both em- and endashes, so I am slightly irritated that using them would make my writing look like ai now
I have always enjoyed good punctuation. And being a bit of a nerd myself, I used em dashes throughout University in my essays. To me it felt like a cool little keyboard shortcut that only few knew about. I still use them today—in emails and reports. I haven't yet been personally called out for using AI, but I have noticed a lot more people using them.
So what if people use AI to help them with their grammar and punctuation. At the end of the day, people are still sending messages they endorse—even if it's not one they could have articulated without some help from AI.
My main issue with people doing it, and I have multiple, is that it isn't just helping them with grammar and punctuation (I don't have any problem with people having the little editor autocorrect). It is rewriting the message entirely. Many times the new AI produced message had nuance and tone either added or stripped out, and rarely it has added items entirely. I probably wouldn't have noticed it if my CEO been had not been using it so heavily to restate what has already been stated elsewhere, especially in cases where I have read or written the original statement. Let me tell you that when you are told vehemently that you said something that you did not because of AI help it is beyond frustrating.
Like so many things in life, it's about how you use the tool, not about the tool itself.
I have an employee who uses AI to write regularly, despite vehemently denying using it. An em dash is a key to me that they used AI to write something (and bullet points to some extent). At the end of the day, I really don't care if someone uses AI to smooth out their writing or help organize thoughts. This employee though, will come up with a document or letter that sounds great and is well composed, but fails to address what they actually are supposed to be writing about.
I don't care if you use AI, just use it as a tool to help you do your job instead of having it do your job for you.
Exactly. At the end of the day it is the human behind the computer that clicks send/post. Use AI all you want, just proof read the the stuff before publishing it. Some people don't have a great vocabulary, and in some respect using AI can help to grow their vocabulary. Just don't publish things you wouldn't normally say, especially things you don't fully understand.
I've used AI intermittently to draft emails when time poor. It's much faster to give ChatGPT a sloppy prompt with the gist of the message for it to then instantly spit out a full draft. The responsible thing to do then is to proof read it and make changes that make it more "you". I think that's fine.
Yup, I use AI sometimes to correct my writing because I apparently suck at it and I was not aware. Whoops.