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this is the start of everything falling apart, i can feel it (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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image saying "at least the important software isn't being vibe cod-" (cut off) and showing a graph of em dashes in the linux kernel over time with a sharp rise the past few years
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[–] 76 points 2 days ago (21 children)

As an actual human who uses em dashes

or usually, two or three hyphens that turn into an em dash in Markdown

I feel personally attacked.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    aren't those regular dashes? em dashes seem just a bit longer

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  • [–] 25 points 2 days ago* (3 children)

    N dashes. They are as wide as an n. M dashes are as wide as an m.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    But what is em?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago* (4 children)

    I will usually just use one (1) hyphen for that purpose - in the much same way that I will use "..." instead of “...” - because I like to upset typography nerds.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    Have you tried using the dedicated triple dot character (…) instead of three separate dots (...)? It's a life changer

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    They said they do it to ‘upset typography nerds’ — likely they tried…

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Microsoft Word also appears to autocorrect dashes into em-dashes. I'm not sure it's because of copilot since I noticed around 2024, but a bunch of documents I use at work, drafted/revised in 2021, are full of them.

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  • [+] -24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 11 points 2 days ago

    Sure. You can totally avoid them. Just by using very basic sentences. The same is true for a lot of puctuation.

    But that doesn't make your sentences planned better but is simply a sign of limiting yourself by avoiding any complexity.

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