alt Hacker NewsShoutout to my English Major comrades who have been using em-dashes forever, and have had to stop so we don't sound like AI.
If AI starts use the New Yorker style diaeresis (umlaut-looking thing when there are two vowels in words like coöperate) I swear I'm gonna lose it.
Replies
Agreed.
Join me in double-dash em proximates. Shows you manually typed it out with total disregard token count and technical correctness.
I genuinely didn't know those existed, I will subsequently be adding them to my repertoire
I used to use em-dashes and en-dashes in my work emails and other writings, but stopped using them when they became AI markers.
I'd like to see a histogram of my HN em dash usage over time. Maybe someone could get bored and visualize the 2nd order effects described here.
> New Yorker style diaeresis
I was going to say that I respect it, but find it utterly absurd that they do that. But your comment made me look it up again—I had no idea it was just obsolete/archaïc (except in the New Yorker), I'd thought it was a language feature their 'style' guide had invented.
I worked for GitHub for a time. There was a cultural abhorrence of the diaeresis, it was considered reader-hostile and elitist. I refused to coöperate with that edict internally, although I grant that every company has the right to micro-manage communications with the public.