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650 points Stratoscope | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.426s | source
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A_D_E_P_T ◴[] 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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BalinKing ◴[] No.43498177[source]
This test feels biased by the fact that, like others have said, macOS provides keyboard shortcuts. For example, I'm only Gen Z and yet have tried for many years to use the proper dash characters in the right places, which is made much easier by virtue of being on a Mac.

Of course, I guess it's entirely possible—even accounting for OS—that this test remains statistically useful. It makes me kinda sad that my (very much human-generated) writing fails the Turing test....

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1. pests ◴[] No.43501946[source]
Windows does too now via Windows+. which opens the "emoji keyboard" but you can switch to the "symbols" tab to see unicode. It does have multiple dashes in the quick access bar at the top or you can search.
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2. dspillett ◴[] No.43504469[source]
I've used WinCompose¹² to add key composition to Windows for many years (after discovering the concept in Unix-land), which I still find more convenient than the other options I've tried (including the Windows Emoji keyboard).

----

[1] https://wincompose.info/

[2] Though having checked just now, the sequences for en-dash and em-dash don't seem to be working. Perhaps one of my custom macros is interfering somehow… (it is behaving overall, ellipsis just worked as did the following diacritic and other symbols: áèîöūñ±⁰¹²∞¡¿‽π⬚). I'll have to poke at it later and see what is ary.