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

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650 points Stratoscope | 3 comments | 27 Mar 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 1.374s | 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. kingo55 ◴[27 Mar 25 21:36 UTC] No.43498472[source]▶
More sophisticated clients require we use dashes correctly. I first encountered it pre-pandemic, so in professional contexts it's not a sure-fire signal of LLM use — Should you see em dashes correctly used in the Hacker News comments or Reddit, for that matter, then it's pretty reliable tell... Usually. ;)
replies(2): >>43498529 #>>43500111 #
2. necovek ◴[27 Mar 25 21:43 UTC] No.43498529[source]▶
As I mentioned above, I've had them easily accessible with a keyboard layout for >20 years on all the systems I've used — the only caveat that I find it really ugly with no spaces around em-dashes, which is usually recommended for English.
replies(1): >>43498751 #
3. lxgr ◴[28 Mar 25 00:52 UTC] No.43500111[source]▶
I'd like to have the record show that I've been using them since before LLMs :)

Not sure when I started; my guess is that I got into the habit of using them in LaTeX when writing my thesis, and then at some point realized that they are easily reachable on standard macOS keyboard layouts (via "option" + "-").