• Taldan@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    That’s about an entirely different symbol, the em dash

    Em dash: —

    Dash: ‐

    The fact you don’t even know the difference is why it was such a hallmark of AI. It was previously used primarily in formal writing like published literature and academia

    It’s actually become more common in layspeak though because of AI, but primarily because it’s automatically used when doing 2 dashes on many modern systems

    • korazail@eviltoast.org
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      2 days ago

      Slightly funny story… I agree with the concept—I was mistaken (and corrected recently); and that many tools like markdown or Word treat TWO hyphens as an EN dash and to get an EM dash you need THREE!

      I love abusing the semicolon, the ellipsis and the hyphen/dash(es) to indicate a mild pause when transliterating casual speech to text. To my horror, I’d been using the wrong one!