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

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650 points Stratoscope | 2 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.412s | 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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1. dskhatri ◴[27 Mar 25 21:27 UTC] No.43498392[source]▶
There are regular folk who tend to be pedantic with their writing. I'm not sure this is a good test of whether text is generated by LLM. Consider that some may use LLMs to correct spelling or grammar, and the LLMs may often edit an en dash to em dash.
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2. bangaladore ◴[28 Mar 25 14:02 UTC] No.43505553[source]▶
To be clear, It's essentially impossible to know if a given text is autonomously LLM generated (a bot on social media for example) or is the result of revision of real human effort.

To what extent that distinction matters, I'm not sure.