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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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Comic Strips
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Other Comic Communities of Interest
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I think what makes the em dash seem AI-like is... there isnt an em dash button on the keyboard.
So typically the only way those show up is when markdown-to-blog-post tools convert normal dashes into stylized em dashes as a transpiling process.
Stuff like hugo and etc largely do this automatically.
So if a poster uses an em dash out of that context, it right away throws up a red flag cuz... howd you do that easily?
Did you memorize the alt code to make one?
As someone who uses a phone — you just hold a minus until it allows you to input dashes. Also, when I used windows I had it memorized, on Linux it doesn't always work, but should be Ctrl+U 2014, on Mac it's just minus with modifier buttons pressed
It's not hard to input that if you want to
It depends on the keyboard, and the software. I'm using HeliBoard on my phone right now, and all I have to do to make an em dash is hold the dash key—that's it. It's actually quite trivial to add em dashes in various cases, and I wish folks wouldn't pretend otherwise.
I also make use of other characters, like my beloved interrobang. I actually have that pinned to my clipboard, so I can paste it when it's appropriate.
"You care about writing enough to use special characters‽"
"Yes."
If you use the compose key, you don't have to memorize the unicode value. You just press
compose ---.if you use lemmy, type
a -- bto get "a -- b".With that you made an en-dash, not an em-dash.
Let's see if it does anything if you use three a
b vs two a -- b ?
Edit: Yep looks like that's it.
Interestingly, in my client both show up as separate dashes. I suspect it's simply a ligature in the font used in your frontend.
E: Hm, no that is not it, copy-pasting the text from the web frontend copies the em- an en-dashes, so it's actually replacing the characters during rendering.
Yeah it seems to be a feature of the text editor, it already replaced the combination of input characters with the proper singular output character when I used the preview feature.
For context: The footer of my home instance says that it's running Lemmy 0.19.20 at the moment, which is the latest stable version. Milan Ihl is good about keeping us up to date.
But if you're writing something significant, you're probably using a text editor, and many of them will automatically replace the en dash when the em dash when the are spaces on either side.
Fun fact: on some keyboard layouts you can access the em dash easly
This is the most common Italian layout
You can see that you just need to press control+hyphen
The marking above the hyphen there is an underscore
it's telling you that hitting shift-hyphen will give you an underscore.
You may be using software that supports inserting an em-dash when you hit that combination, but I don't believe that it's the keyboard layout that dictates that.
searches
It sounds like Microsoft Word does something similar:
https://www.avantixlearning.ca/microsoft-word/how-to-insert-an-em-dash-or-en-dash-in-a-word-document-4-ways/
Yes, if you use shift it will give you an underscore but with control (or alt gr) it will give an em dash, should be a thing on Windows and i belive KDE
Or it could be that the keyboard that i use is just like ts but i doubt
i gotta be honest, before it became a big talking point with AI, i didn't realize em dashes, en dashes, and dashes were different characters, just different grammatical functions of the same character. i figured fancy word processors made them longer to make them distinct from minus signs, but that was it!
If you go through Unicode, there are a bunch of hyphen-like characters. In many typefaces, some may appear identical.
searches
EDIT: That's not an exhaustive list, either. Off-the-cuff, I can also think of the line-drawing characters, which also have a horizontal line.
I'll be honest, I was this moment-old when I released that too, thanks to reading this comment. I, also, assumed they were just different stylisations of the same thing.
I use a the Compose key (Compose hyphen hyphen hyphen) or emacs (C-x 8 _ m) on Linux, and on Android, my soft keyboard supports holding hyphen to insert one.
And the Lemmy Web UI converts a triple hyphen to an em-dash.
On KDE, the default keyboard layout makes it pretty easy to type the various dashes and quotation marks, so that's one way. Ever since discovering that, I've been making a conscious effort to use them (because I am the type of person who likes doing the typograhically correct thing, even in an informal context… maybe that's the problem, actually). Haven't been called out as “AI” yet, but it's probably going to happen at some point.
Same on GNOME, em-dash is RightAlt-- on my layout
It's one click away on my android keyboard.
On a Mac it’s shift + option + dash. Just option + dash for an en dash.
let me -- try something
yep, lemmy can do it.
Weird — I just see a double dash
Yep, client-side rendering.
The Lemmy Web UI converts a double hyphen to an en-dash and a triple to an em-dash when displaying text. However, not all clients do this. I'm viewing this in Eternity, and it leaves the hyphens intact.
This conversion happens when viewing the comment, rather than writing it.
Mac has always been opt+shift+hyphen
Honestly for old versions of windows yes, you had to learn the arcane alt+0151, but I was already used to that for typing in french on a British keyboard. It's now more like Mac with win+shift+hyphen
Android and IPhone, you just hold on the hyphen to get to them
And many word processors (and Linux via compose) turn a triple hyphen into one