Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT

The em-dash giveaway is an actual Unicode em-dash character, right? I professionally had to learn Latex to write a paper in the 1990s and picked up a "---" habit ever since, and I've been wondering if that's some kind of weird LLM tell now.

It's more the style of setting up contrasts that's the real llm tell. That they happen to use a typographic mark that most people don't know how to type is just fuel on the fire.

There's an easy keyboard shortcut for it on Macs. I always saw it as a signifier of "Mac user with enough interest in writing style to use em-dashes instead of parentheses."

But I'm not on a Mac right now so I don't know how to even make a real one at the moment other than that LaTeX method.

Easy is almost an understatement; it's Alt+Hyphen. [Edit: My bad that's en-dash, can't tell the difference in this monospaced text field. Em-dash you have to hold shift.]

I guess on Windows it's Alt+0,1,5,1 on a numpad. Or you copy+paste from Character Map.

To be pedantic: Opt-shift-hyphen for the em dash (longer one). Opt-hyphen only gets you an en dash.

You are absolutely correct.

…which is the appropriate character for ranges, i.e., page 1–2.

I find it a bit sad that using proper typography is now frowned upon, but it seems that ship has sailed.

Right, you sniped my edit. I don't know why I gave up my hn delay setting...

Anyone who types in MS word for the improved spell checker and then copies their comment to a browser will automatically get hyphens changed to em-dashes.

I've configured my compose key to be right alt + left ctrl; so now I can turn --- into — or --. into – (no one talks about en dashes).

A compose key is very useful if you’re a typography snob — as many of us who studied mathematics and ended up learning TeX probably are… I haven’t been paying attention to exactly what I’ve typed with it lately, but I habitually use symbols like these on autopilot and they seem to render OK on any device that someone reading my writing is likely to be using:

≤ ≥ ≠ × — – “ ” ’ ° … ¹ ² ³ ™ • ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

If you work in languages other than English but have a standard English keyboard layout, a compose key is handy for typing accents and non-English letters/ligatures too.

You can install a custom layout on Windows, like the one I made: https://typo.ale.sh/

I primarily work in Danish; but I use a US Intl AltGrDead[0] keymap, so I can access most needed symbols without the compose key, such as æ (altgr+z), ø (altgr+l) and å (altgr+w). But I still wanted to write ⅚ more easily, so I also added the compose key for even more symbols.

[0] The AltGrDead variant just means that the regular dead keys on the US Intl are flipped; e.g. ' is now no longer dead per default: I have to hit altgr+' to make it dead (i.e. an acute accent (´)).

Em-dashes are only incidentally related to contrasting statements like that, too. My main use of them is quasi-parenthetical interpolation. It can be nice when you want more emphasis on the aside, or just to avoid using parens or commas if you started writing something that already uses them.

From the discussion with our head of communications (whose pedantry I approve of) US usage avoids spaces—like this—and should use an em-dash.

But British usage – instead – uses spaces, so an en-dash or an em-dash is acceptable.

One of the reasons I'm not on that page–I have a policy of using en dashes because I am lazy

The fact that its not very useful for the forms of writing most people participate in nowadays--short form responses that are heavily contextual. Even longer form writing is often labored over--people use LLMs for outdated types of communication, like long-winded emails or school papers.

Idk, working in the AI space, I've started to write very succinctly and straight to the point, maybe as a counterweight to the often overly flattering, verbose forms of prose that the LLMs employ. I pay close attention to every word and try to never write more than is necessary.

Less words maybe good if useless filler gone.

But what if need more words for complicated idea?

Short message easy if just 'orange man good' or 'orange man bad' but what if want to explain reason also? Dumb down? What if discussion too dumb already?

Not just Apple users. The compose-key does this on a variety of desktop operating systems, where the shortcut is COMPOSE - - - for em-dash, and - - . for en-dash.

Oh yes, compose-key is great for the occasional German, but even for my native Dutch it is useful — not to mention Frisian.

Another one is … instead of ...

Alternatively, Compose 2 - for en dash and Compose 3 - for em dash.

This is configurable and can be turned off.

Generally spaces around em-dashes is a question of style, not pre- or pro-scribed by any specific typographical rule. One nice middle ground is a hair space ( ), although it’s a pain to insert.

My usage is not just parentheticals—when they're used like this—it's ironically continuations — a turn the sentence takes but not really standalone.

And the continuations… Honestly? They'll never <|im_end|>.

// • Chronic option-dash and option-shift-dash user, option-[ or option-shift-[ as well as option-] and option-shift-] — not to mention option-8 and option-; …

> spaces around em-dashes is a question of style, not pre- or pro-scribed by any specific typographical rule

Writing and publishing style guides like Hart's Rules (Oxford Style Guide) & Chicago manual of style have the 'em' dash use as a parenthetical closed or "no spaces" dash.

In British use – Hart's Rules – writers will choose the 'en' dash with spaces as a parenthetical dash, where US writers/publishers choose the closed 'em' dash for the same thing.

Imo, there is a conflation of 'en' dash and 'em' dash going around due to the ease of smart-dashes auto-correction turning (--) into 'em' dash with the 'en' dash and non-auto-correct 'em' dash needing a key-combo.

Common everyday typing online, I think people will simply use what is convenient and "good enough" -- a single hyphen dash as an 'en' dash or 2-hyphen dashes that may or may not auto correct into an 'em' dash. I prefer mixing spaces with a 2-hyphen dash 'em' dash, but I'm not a published writer so I enjoy doing wild things like that

I configured my Markdown renderer to replace ` -- ` with " — ". Hopefully those narrow spaces make it through HN's rendering — it's much easier when your tooling can do the job for you.

https://github.com/andrewaylett/aylett.co.uk/blob/d338d35a3d...

See also :

https://norme-azerty.fr/en/

(Also provides access to the Greek alphabet.)

Or you've had WinCompose installed for years and type Compose+hyphen+hyphen+hyphen. — is easy to type that way. The same works for Linux with a compose key enabled, WinCompose is a program to give Windows a compose key, and comes with default sequences including those found by default in most distro's XCompose list.

Big shout-out to WinCompose, it's the only way I found my keyboard usable while being bilingual :)