Are em-dashes really that common to use or did I just start noticing them after LLMs became popular for rewriting comments?
replyNot implying your comment is LLM generated, clearly it isn't but asking as a genuine question.
Pretty dang common. OS X and macOS (and maybe iOS and iPadOS, though I'm not certain) have been autocorrecting "--" into "—" for over a decade. Windows users have been using Alt codes for them since approximately forever ago: https://superuser.com/q/811318.
replyTypography nerds, which are likely overrepresented on HN, love both em dash and en dash, and we especially love knowing when to use each. Punctation geeks, too! If you know what an octothorp or an interrobang are, you've probably been using em dashes for a long time.
Folks who didn't know what an em dash was by name are now experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon en masse. I've literally had to disable my "--" autocorrect just to not be accused of using an LLM when writing. It's annoying.
⌥- produces a – as well. That's sometimes easier than typing `--` and hoping for the best.
replyThat's an en-dash. You want to also hold shift to make it an em-dash.
replyIt really is. We dash-users are the real and most important victims of the AI revolution. I hope someday our story will be told (by the machines)
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