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stego-techtoday at 4:19 PM3 repliesview on HN

I had no idea what I was using were called “EM-dashes” until the AI bubble. I just used them to reflect pauses in my speech for tangents - an old habit from my IRC days.

Incidentally, some folks reported my stuff for potential AI generation and I had to respond to the mods about it. So that was kinda funny, if also sad to hear that some folks thought I was a bot.

I’m a dinosaur, not a robot dinosaur. I’m nowhere near that cool, alas.


Replies

Aachentoday at 7:29 PM

How did you make the character without googling it?

seabrookmxtoday at 4:25 PM

But the em-dash is a different character. I think even those that use a pause would just opt for - on their keyboard, whereas the em-dash — requires additional work on most (all?) keyboard layouts. It's _not_ more work for an AI though hence why it's a tell.

devbtoday at 4:25 PM

> I just used them to reflect pauses in my speech for tangents - and old habit from my IRC days.

The tell here is that you used a hyphen, not an em-dash.

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