You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands.
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You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands. I had them before AI was conceived and I’ll have them long after it’s gone.
You have to provoke them — ideally by inserting several sorts of punctuation; en dashes (–) and hyphens (-) included.
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You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands. I had them before AI was conceived and I’ll have them long after it’s gone.
@dramypsyd@ohai.social Technically your em-dashes are wrong. em-dashes are generally not meant to be surrounded by spaces—unlike en-dashes, which the Germans use for speaking their German language – a truly marvelous one, probably.
Practically, have fun! Rules for language don't matter. -
@dramypsyd@ohai.social Technically your em-dashes are wrong. em-dashes are generally not meant to be surrounded by spaces—unlike en-dashes, which the Germans use for speaking their German language – a truly marvelous one, probably.
Practically, have fun! Rules for language don't matter.@divVerent @dramypsyd I am an ex-small-time editor, and for practical and aesthetic reasons think that consistently wrapping em- and not en- dashes in whitespace is the better option.
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@dramypsyd@ohai.social Technically your em-dashes are wrong. em-dashes are generally not meant to be surrounded by spaces—unlike en-dashes, which the Germans use for speaking their German language – a truly marvelous one, probably.
Practically, have fun! Rules for language don't matter.@divVerent I learned something new today—thank you!
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@divVerent @dramypsyd I am an ex-small-time editor, and for practical and aesthetic reasons think that consistently wrapping em- and not en- dashes in whitespace is the better option.
@DamonHD@mastodon.social @dramypsyd@ohai.social I also prefer em-dash with spaces, despite being wrong. Just looks better and matches the purpose of the dash more. -
You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands. I had them before AI was conceived and I’ll have them long after it’s gone.
@dramypsyd They're so much nicer than having to put in two separate dashes to loosely represent them. I will never go back — if someone accuses me, so be it.
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You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands. I had them before AI was conceived and I’ll have them long after it’s gone.
@dramypsyd Damn right. I’ve always been a bit embarrassed by how much I overuse em dashes — and, really, who wouldn’t be? — but I’ve decided THIS is the hill I’m gonna die on. They can’t take them away from us. Dash proudly.
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@tychotithonus
It's all about expectations. I did find it jarring upon the first encounters, but now I find it jarring to see spaces where I'm not used to seeing them.@gnate @tychotithonus I have a tendency to type them without spaces, but I'm trying to retrain myself. Screen readers parse the words better with the spaces.
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@gnate @tychotithonus I have a tendency to type them without spaces, but I'm trying to retrain myself. Screen readers parse the words better with the spaces.
@djwudi
I'm not even in the 20th century, and here you are dragging me into the 21st!Thanks, good factor to be aware of.
@tychotithonus -
@dramypsyd I do very much hope that "AI" will son be dust and ashes, and the em dash can return to its proper function.
@robparsons @dramypsyd It won't, any more than the Internet went away when the Internet bubble burst.
Generative AI will spend some time as a punchline, and then it'll come back, somewhat tamed by the bubble, so people will be more likely to use it where it makes sense, and not try to shove it into everything.
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@robparsons @dramypsyd It won't, any more than the Internet went away when the Internet bubble burst.
Generative AI will spend some time as a punchline, and then it'll come back, somewhat tamed by the bubble, so people will be more likely to use it where it makes sense, and not try to shove it into everything.
@arensb @dramypsyd I was thinking wishfully, but with my rational mind I think what you say is accurate. I am more scepical about genAI having uses that justify the costs, but I'm sure there are some once those who care about the financing stop having wet dreams about it.
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@arensb @dramypsyd I was thinking wishfully, but with my rational mind I think what you say is accurate. I am more scepical about genAI having uses that justify the costs, but I'm sure there are some once those who care about the financing stop having wet dreams about it.
@robparsons @dramypsyd From what I've seen, it seems pretty good at summarizing long texts.
I'd also love to see the AI learning phase followed by an optimization phase, where a trained model is cleaned up and made more efficient, so that it takes fewer resources to run it. Especially for any model that will be used by many people.
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You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands. I had them before AI was conceived and I’ll have them long after it’s gone.
@dramypsyd As someone ruined early on by LaTeX, I can point to a ... well, depends on how you count, but it's got a 30-40+ year history in digital text.
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@divVerent I learned something new today—thank you!
@dramypsyd @divVerent Germans use en-dashes? That's possible, but I'd love some explanation. I see Germans use mostly hyphens or em-dashes, and for "speaking" we have quotation marks (that are different from the English style ones I used just there).
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@dramypsyd @divVerent Germans use en-dashes? That's possible, but I'd love some explanation. I see Germans use mostly hyphens or em-dashes, and for "speaking" we have quotation marks (that are different from the English style ones I used just there).
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de @dramypsyd@ohai.social By German typography rules, indeed, en-dash with spaces around it is.
I also can confirm that most books do follow that standard.
Germans who write emails or documents though very frequently use the em-dash with spaces around it, or just a single dash and don't care (in my case, I might use it more if it were more convenient to type, like the --- alias most word processors have). -
@dramypsyd @divVerent Germans use en-dashes? That's possible, but I'd love some explanation. I see Germans use mostly hyphens or em-dashes, and for "speaking" we have quotation marks (that are different from the English style ones I used just there).
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@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de @dramypsyd@ohai.social By German typography rules, indeed, en-dash with spaces around it is.
I also can confirm that most books do follow that standard.
Germans who write emails or documents though very frequently use the em-dash with spaces around it, or just a single dash and don't care (in my case, I might use it more if it were more convenient to type, like the --- alias most word processors have).@divVerent @dramypsyd You confused me a little here, but fair enough. I was wondering about your point on *speaking* German, because I don't tend to speak dashes.
So I thought you meant speech/quotation marks. I've encountered German text that used en or em dashes here as well, but that's a fairly rare thing.
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@divVerent @dramypsyd You confused me a little here, but fair enough. I was wondering about your point on *speaking* German, because I don't tend to speak dashes.
So I thought you meant speech/quotation marks. I've encountered German text that used en or em dashes here as well, but that's a fairly rare thing.
@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de @dramypsyd@ohai.social Yeah, sorry - that was a mistake indeed. When I wrote speaking, meant speaking as in using a language, not as in moving one's mouth. But that indeed is not proper and I am sorry for the confusion. -
You will pry my em dashes from my cold — and dead — hands. I had them before AI was conceived and I’ll have them long after it’s gone.
@dramypsyd The problem with using them is now that — if you do — you are suspected of having an LLM ghostwriter. Personally I find their usage clunky.
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@dramypsyd The problem with using them is now that — if you do — you are suspected of having an LLM ghostwriter. Personally I find their usage clunky.
@edwtjo The problem I run into is my writing was used to train LLMs without my consent so sometimes I get flagged for sounding like myself
