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How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)

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650 points Stratoscope | 1 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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A_D_E_P_T ◴[27 Mar 25 20:41 UTC] No.43497927[source]▶
AFAIK most computer keyboards don't have em dashes. Rather than hit ALT+0151 every time, I've always just strung along two hyphens, like: --

Absolutely proper and correct use of em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens is, to me, the most obvious tell of the LLM writer. In fact, I think that you can use it to date internet writing in general. For it seems to me that real em dashes were uncommon pre-2022.

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1. PartiallyTyped ◴[27 Mar 25 20:53 UTC] No.43498058[source]▶
On mac it's very easy to get an em-dash, just alt+shift+`-`. Though I do concur that it's more likely to come from an LLM, I don't think it should be considered a tell — I find it more of a predictor of the writer's age.