One thing that always makes me think something is AI written is the repeated use of sentences like "It's not X, its Y".

You’re absolutely right! Let’s see if we can find better ways to determine if something is AI-generated:

• what other styles are giveaways?
• maybe a combination of em dashes and bulleted lists?
• I’m running out of ideas for this joke.

After several years of Word automatically changing a dash between two words to a wider dash (maybe not the same type as emdash?) it's weird to see those same dashes becoming a tell of inauthentic.

When are we going to see the AI using two spaces after a full stop to try and pretend that it types like someone more than 50 years old?

Just use them regardless. A lot of sloppers realized they can ask the slop making machines to leave them out. I even seen stuff when they added random typos to fool some people.

"—cheeks."

People who read books are a different breed. I wouldn't worry about them.

But if we're going to make a lazy heuristical stand against AI, I've always enjoyed the liberal use of semi-colons.

Did you memorize the alt code to make one?

If you use the compose key, you don't have to memorize the unicode value. You just press compose ---.

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!

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?

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.

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."

On a Mac it’s shift + option + dash. Just option + dash for an en dash.

It's one click away on my android keyboard.

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

Did you memorize the alt code to make one?

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

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.

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

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.

Smartphone cameras are almost certainly the largest source of photography in society today, and those things default to doing all kinds of automatic processing on the images they take.