The AI is trained on human input. It uses the dash because humans did.

I'm skeptical this is the reason:

- Chatgpt uses mdashes in basically every answer, while on average humans don't (the average user might not even be aware it exists)

- if the preference for em dashes came from the training set, other AIs would show the same bias (gemini and Le chat don't seem to use them at all)

	▲	ceejayoz 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Chatgpt uses mdashes in basically every answer, while on average humans don't I would not be shocked if an aspect to training is bucketing "this is an example of good writing style" into a specific category. Published books - far more likely to have had an editor sprinkle in fancy stuff - may be weightier for some aspects. My iPhone converts -- to — automatically. So does Google Docs / Gmail (althought I'm not certain if that's on their end or my Mac's auto-correct kicking in). Plenty of them out there. > other AIs would show the same bias Unless they've been trained not to use it, now that a bunch of non-technical people believe "emdash = AI, always".

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pessimizer 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is that why it uses colorful emoticons, too? Was it trained on Onlyfans updates?

	▲	ceejayoz 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		It was trained on everything they could get their hands on. Yes, it uses emoticons because human writers sometimes use emoticons.

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chinathrow 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah but a dash, at least on my keyboard is a '-', not the one quoted above.

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Ndymium 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

En and em dashes are easily accessible on both my laptop's and phone's keyboard layouts and I like using them, just like putting the ö in coöperate. It's sad if this now makes me look like a robot and I have to use the wrong dashes to be more "human".

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unwind 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

TIL that some people spell cooperate with an "ö".

As a Swedish native it really breaks my reading of an English word, but apparently it's supposed to indicate that you should pronounce each "o" separately. Language is fun.

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cap11235 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

As a native English speaker, it also breaks my reading of "cooperate". Never seen it before. I think parent is just annoyingly eccentric for the sake of it.

	▲	anonymars 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Most commonly seen in naïve, and the New Yorker
	▲	Ndymium 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I admit that latter part is just for whimsy, because I think it looks fun. The dashes I like for their aesthetics and if that makes me eccentric then so be it. They shouldn't distract anyone's reading, or at least they didn't use to before LLMs.

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Freak_NL 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Using umlauts to signal that a vowel is pronounced separately is common in a number of languages (like Dutch).

	▲	unwind 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah, I know. It's just confusing for us poor Swedes since "ö" in Swedish is a separate letter with its own pronunciation, and not a somehow-modified "o". Always takes an extra couple of seconds to remember how "Motörhead" is supposed to be said. :)
	▲	1718627440 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		But it's not used as an Umlaut here, that's exactly what's confusing. Here this is used as a trema/diaeresis.
	▲	inejge 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That kind of use technically makes it a diaeresis, not an umlaut.

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jnwatson 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Em dashes are widely used. The diaeresis is only used in The New Yorker and those that copied their style.

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justusthane 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you’re using the dash on your keyboard (which is a “hyphen–minus” character) in place of a en dash or em dash, then you are using the wrong character. That’s fine — it’s certainly more convenient, and I wouldn’t call you out on it — but it’s silly to assume that other people don’t use the correct characters.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/punctuation-capitalization/da...

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ceejayoz 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

If I type two dashes—like this—my phone changes it into a special character. Same for three dots…