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270 points imasl42 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.283s | source
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protontypes ◴[] No.45658345[source]
Whenever I see an em dash (—), I suspect the entire text was written by an AI.
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psunavy03 ◴[] No.45658389[source]
That says more about your lack of writing skills and understanding of grammar than AI.
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happytoexplain ◴[] No.45658565[source]
That's simply not true, and pointlessly derogatory.

This article does not appear to be AI-written, but use of the emdash is undeniably correlated with AI writing. Your reasoning would only make sense if the emdash existed on keyboards. It's reasonable for even good writers to not know how or not care to do the extra keystrokes to type an emdash when they're just writing a blog post - that doesn't mean they have bad writing skills or don't understand grammar, as you have implied.

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1. Terr_ ◴[] No.45658777[source]
> That's simply not true, and pointlessly derogatory.

That same critique should first be aimed at the topmost comment, which has the same problem plus the added guilt of originating (A) a false dichotomy and (B) the derogatory tone that naturally colors later replies.

> It's reasonable for even good writers to not know how or not care

The text is true, but in context there's an implied fallacy: If X is "reasonable", it does not follow that Not-X is unreasonable.

More than enough (reasonable) real humans do add em-dashes when they write. When it comes to a long-form blog post—like this one submitted to HN—it's even more likely than usual!

> the extra keystrokes

Such as alt + numpad 0150 on Windows, which has served me well when on that platform for... gosh, decades now.