That is true but now you see them more often than before in writings of younger people.

I’m 43 and em dashes were rare in random slack messages. Now they are — everywhere.

I liked using em dashes, but now I've stopped. I'm ecen less likely to fix minor spelling and grammatical errors that I otherwise would've, because at least it will be easier to recognize a human behind the comment or post.

Also, signing my name like this helps too:
,,,.),,,.)==============D~~~~~~~

This comment would have been great — had it not been for the lack of an em dash to create irony.

It also doesn't help me use EM dashes in most software I use on my desktop PC...

Where's your lucky onion abe?

There were a couple years where spelling/ grammar checks where it would always correct like half of the regular dashes id use into em dashes, and id have to copy an email dash after I spell checked, then ctrl +f all the regular dashes and replace them with the coppied em dash

Em I don't know. Just seems like a dash with ah New Zealand accent, eh.

I'm sorry Dave—I'm afraid I can't do that.

The quotes are also common when copying from word as well.

Different length dashes serve different grammatical purposes, so you can assume they didn't just use one dash because they intended to use two.

Funnily enough, the "dash" people use most often isn't even technically called a dash, it's a hyphen.

Classy

I refuse to stop using en dashes. I've been using them because they are good typography, and the fact that clankers got clued in to that doesn't make it wrong.

I've been using them for a long time, as they are also used in German typography like em dashes in English typography – only surrounded by spaces. They are easy to type on a Linux or MacOS keyboards layout (E.g. Opt+-)

On MacOS: Opt+Shift+-

En dash is the same without the shift

There was a recent podcast episode by 99% Invisible defending the em-dash

It seems that its usage in AI generated text increased after feeding the AI lots of 19th century literature, which seems to have been its previous peak usage. I don’t hate it - it can make text more legible by breaking it up into smaller chunks. It’s an oversimplification to automatically discount any text with an em-dash as AI generated.

TIL, thanks

Very, very similar, yes. It can be annoying!

We've got our browser set to use a monospace font for everything, everywhere, including all websites. It's awesome for seeing if you've accidentally typed two spaces. Not so great for checking to make sure you're using the right kind of dash!

-- Frost

(also Lemmy, because it's annoying, is going to turn my double - here into an en/em dash (not 100% sure which). In this case, I DO in fact mean a double -, dangit.)

I don't care, I'm not giving up the em-dash in my own writing. Good luck reading half of my run-on sentences without it~~~

You can still have the same function using a hyphen. How do you even type an em dash on a standard keyboard?

Compose - -

I assume compose is meant to be a key? What key is compose?

If you can't read a fucking em dash —already a commonly-used punctuation mark— without thinking the author must be AI, then you are both insufficiently trained —either in grammar or in how to use your own keyboard— and bad at identifying AI responses.

The Compose key.

If you don't have a compose key, well, you should have one. You can define it easily in the Kde control center. I suppose there's the equivalent in Gnome.

It was introduced by Sun. It's very convenient.

I know I trapped myself into doom scrolling on Insta recently but almost all the descriptions on posts are generated with an AI and really poorly done where they don't even match up with the media being shown

COLD.
DEAD.
HANDS.

No, autocorrect usually changes a hyphen to an em dash for me

Alt+0151, baby!

Yes, it's annoying. I had to manually turn it off in LibreOffice and install an extension on WordPress to stop it autoconverting speech marks. I typed what I intended to type, dammit!