literally unusable if you don't want to be seen as an illiterate chatgpt monger. so depressing. I'm tired of using semi colons and commas in their stead, they're just too clunky in certain situations. burn the data centers down. fuck and when all actual writers have switched over, like I have (not calling myself a writer fyi), then the ai will just start using those instead. nothing good comes from generative, recreational ai. opium crisis of our times, no use. genuinely, no use. fuck them all. fuck the child herder elon and his (possibly) bastard son peter thiel. karp fuck you too

  • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
    ·
    3 个月前

    English is my first and only language and idk what the difference is and honestly had only learned about the emdash when it became a signifier of AI.

    It's a little longer than a hyphen, right?

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
      ·
      3 个月前

      It's called an em dash because it's the length of a typographic em, which was supposedly originally the width of the letter m (hence the name) but is now a bit longer than that. Accordingly, an en dash is half the length of an em dash, and a hyphen is shorter than that still.

      — – -

        • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
          ·
          3 个月前

          The prescriptions for when you're "supposed" to use one or the other are as follows:

          • A hyphen is for joining words together or indicating that a word has been split in the middle and will continue on the next line.
          • An en dash is for ranges of numbers, or at the start of each item in a list. The en dash is also identical, at least in the font I'm looking at, to the minus sign used in math, as well as to the figure dash used for phone numbers and metrical feet. These symbols have separate Unicode points.
          • An em dash is for a lot of other things, most notably uses similar to a colon or parenthesis, or as a way to show interruption. The em dash is also identical, at least in the font I'm looking at, to the quotation dash, which obviously has a separate Unicode point because we need as many Unicode points dedicated to singular straight horizontal lines as possible.

          There are in fact even more horizontal line symbols with Unicode points than even these six.

          But I myself never use en dashes: Ranges in numbers get a ~ like in CJK languages; lists get a hyphen or some other symbol; minuses are also hyphens; phone numbers get hyphens or spaces; and I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to write down a metrical foot.

          • purpleworm [none/use name]
            ·
            3 个月前

            I apparently have always conflated en dashes and hyphens, using what I guess is a minus sign for both: - but that looks like a hyphen to me, so is it not equivalent to the subtraction sign? The layout of my keyboard has it not just next to +/= but also the numpad where a minus should logically go . . .

            • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
              ·
              3 个月前

              The Unicode name for that symbol you typed is actually "hyphen-minus": it's a character created as a compromise in the early days of fixed-width typewriters, which has persisted into the present day as typewriters evolved into modern computer keyboards. The hyphen-minus is identical to a hyphen, which obviously has a separate Unicode point once again, but the hyphen-minus (as the name implies) does double duty as a minus sign as well. It's just that there is technically also a different "proper" minus sign that's a bit wider that you're "supposed" to use "if you can"… I just don't see a reason to bother with it.

          • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
            ·
            3 个月前

            I read all that and understand it, I'm pretty certain.

            Still never using anything but a hyphen

    • ZWQbpkzl [none/use name]
      ·
      3 个月前

      Basically. I think it also miters differently than the standard dash/hyphen/minus sign. -