I'm curious: why are people told not to use the em dash and the semicolon? I honestly don't know.

When I learned English writing, I was taught to use an em dash after words like 'by the way' or 'to add to that' — as a kind of aside. For hyphens, I was taught to use them in compound words. And for semicolons, I learned to use them when moving on to the next sentence within the same clause.

Actually, this is formal writing — techniques I learned in graduate school. Is this 'AI writing'?

It's hard because I'm not a native speaker.

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andrewflnr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It's entirely because it's one of the more obvious tells of AI writing. Most keyboards don't have an easy way to enter an em-dash, so they haven't been part of casual conversation for... decades I guess. AI has no such restrictions, and is trained on formal writing, so it uses them commonly. Similar but less strongly for semicolons. Most people just don't know how to use them.

Regardless of whether you're using AI (please don't btw) or coming by your em-dashes honestly, people who fixate on trivial obvious cues will notice your em-dashes and assume you're using it.

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jdw64 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Maybe it would be better to use an AI translator. Because GPT has AI memory features, right? So when it translates, it often doesn't include hyphens or em dashes. But if you use a Korean translator, it has a function to attach hyphens to the language (kind of like Google Translate).

In Korea, it's not that difficult to input an em dash because you can type it using 'ㄱ + chinese characterbutton' (both based on the Korean keyboard). But I guess it's hard for people outside Korea.

Actually, since Korean doesn't have em dashes or hyphens, you could simply not use them at all. However, in 'formal' writing, I was taught that you should use them. just like you should use 'could' instead of informal alternatives.

This is really tough. When I use Hacker News, I keep a machine translator and DeepL open next to it. When I translate that way, em dashes sometimes appear, and that's what I'm worried about.

I thought this was obvious, but it seems like writing in Korean and then using an AI translator would be much better. The problem is that on this site, I'm not really allowed to use an AI translator either, so I'm almost being forced to write everything manually. The goal is to get overseas freelance work.

I had no idea that typing an em dash is difficult overseas. For me, it's just two buttons I never imagined that would be an issue. Thank you.

	▲	JimDabell an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> I had no idea that typing an em dash is difficult overseas. It’s not. On Apple platforms, you can type two hyphens in a row and let the default text replacement convert it; or you can hold down the hyphen and pick from hyphen, en dash, or em dash; or you can press Option-Shift-Hyphen. I think it’s about as easy on other platforms as well. Don’t listen to them. The em dash is not some obscure punctuation nobody but AI uses.