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Using LLMs at Oxide

(rfd.shared.oxide.computer)
694 points steveklabnik | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 01:17 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bryancoxwell ◴[07 Dec 25 01:57 UTC] No.46178509[source]▶
Find it interesting that the section about LLM’s tells when using it for writing is absolutely littered with emdashes
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bccdee ◴[07 Dec 25 02:24 UTC] No.46178632[source]▶
To be fair, LLMs usually use em-dashes correctly, whereas I think this document misuses them more often than not. For example:

> This can be extraordinarily powerful for summarizing documents — or of answering more specific questions of a large document like a datasheet or specification.

That dash shouldn't be there. That's not a parenthetical clause, that's an element in a list separated by "or." You can just remove the dash and the sentence becomes more correct.

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the_af ◴[07 Dec 25 04:11 UTC] No.46179091[source]▶
I don't know whether that use of the em-dash is grammatically correct, but I've seen enough native English writers use it like that. One example is Philip K Dick.
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1. bccdee ◴[07 Dec 25 18:12 UTC] No.46183697{3}[source]▶
Perhaps you have—or perhaps you've seen this construction instead, where (despite also using "or") the phrase on the other side of the dash is properly parenthetical and has its own subject.