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

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650 points Stratoscope | 4 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 1.025s | source
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bangaladore ◴[27 Mar 25 21:08 UTC] No.43498204[source]▶
Somewhat off topic, however, I'm thoroughly convinced that there is a very high probability something is AI generated when I see Em dashes. Anyone else noticing this?

ChatGPT for example almost always uses them. I'm sure they are more common in academic writing, but its now super common on boards like Reddit.

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pavlov ◴[27 Mar 25 21:13 UTC] No.43498258[source]▶
It’s largely the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. You’ve started noticing it because you just learned about it.
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1. dkdcwashere ◴[27 Mar 25 21:18 UTC] No.43498300[source]▶
yep. been using them for years. others have too. it’s not weird

same thing happened with “delve” — these are just words and grammar, people use them

there is no accurate way to tell whether text came out of a neural network or not

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2. chatmasta ◴[27 Mar 25 21:35 UTC] No.43498463[source]▶
I’m not sure the same happened with “delve.” I saw an analysis of paper abstracts showing a clear uptick of “delve” starting with the mass-adoption of ChatGPT. Maybe it suddenly became a trendy word — especially in paper abstracts — or maybe more paper abstracts were edited by ChatGPT.
3. kingo55 ◴[27 Mar 25 21:43 UTC] No.43498528[source]▶
Combining the various "tells" of an LLM (em dashes, delve, grammatical signs etc) with the context (Reddit comments vs professional setting), you could establish a rough probability it was AI generated. At this point, it's the best we can hope for.
4. LeoPanthera ◴[27 Mar 25 21:47 UTC] No.43498555[source]▶
Gemini is in love with the phrase "It's important to..."

Whenever I see that at the start of a paragraph I know that there's an 80% chance it was written by Gemini.