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smcameronlast Sunday at 1:51 PM1 replyview on HN

I found it funny that in a sentence that mentions "those who can recognize an LLM’s reveals", a few words later, there's an em-dash. I've often used em-dashes myself, so I find it a bit annoying that use of em-dashes is widely considered to be an AI tell.


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bcantrilllast Sunday at 4:22 PM

The em-dash alone is not an LLM-reveal -- it's how the em-dash is used to pace a sentence. In my experience, with an LLM, em-dashes are used to even pacing; for humans (and certainly, for me!), the em-dash is used to deliberately change pacing -- to introduce a pause (like that one!), followed by a bit of a (metaphorical) punch. The goal is to have you read the sentence as I would read it -- and I think if you have heard me speak, you can hear me in my writing.

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