Damn she had AI write it
Damn she had AI write it


Em dashes and emojis
Damn she had AI write it
Em dashes and emojis
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You can pry my em dashes — which I use regularly in writing because I love them — from my cold dead hands (To be fair, I really like parenthetical statements too, could be an ADHD thing).
As someone with AuADHD, can confirm that parenthetical statements are likely an ADHD thing (I use a lot of them).
ADHD: Can't have just one thought (That's my reasoning anyway).
You're providing a thought (and a bonus thought)
(as a treat)
I mean id use them more if i knew how to make them. they hide that fucking button on every keyboard -- it's like some big secret
I've been using em dashes for years. I learnt the alt code for them, because using hyphens for dashes looks awful (before that I'd do the double hyphen for an em dash). Also, like me, I notice you put spaces around the em dashes, which is apparently incorrect, but also according to me is the right way to do it.
Parenthetical statements are so very useful (as they can denote a hierarchy of thoughts (and do many other things))! I love them.
Humans just use dashes - they get the point across and don't require esoteric button presses.
It's trivially easy on everything—except maybe Windows. I use them because I like the way they look.
Android: long press the dash
Linux: Compose Key + three dashes (you can set the Compose Key to whatever you want, I use the Right Alt key).
macOS: Opt + Shift + dash
Or I could just use the dash - way easier.
And it doesn't make me look like a robot.
But it just doesn't look right. I use a double dash, but most places now convert that automatically to em dash.
On the iPhone I just long-press the dash and get alternates like en and em dash, as well as middot. Otherwise, no esoteric button presses. Works on macOS and iPad too.
No need for long press—double dashes convert automatically
Ok————— nice
Some phones turn hyphens into an em dash.
Fuck using an alt code though, I'm just gonna use a comma even when I shouldn't
I use the EURKey layout, right alt becomes a modifier key that, among other changes, turns the dash into an em dash. It's really nice, also for diacritics and such.
I use a keyboard layout, where they are easy to type — this does not make me a llm.
My keyboard does not have an em dash and I have never seen one that does.
Still sus. 🤔
Edit: the em-dash is in the second row next to the 0. You type it by pressing shift and the mentioned key.
What the hell am I looking at? What the fuck is going on with those diagonal arrows??
They are for playing Dance Dance Revolution.
Jokes aside: this is the Neo2 keyboard layout, which has 6 layers. The arrows are used for switching layers — just think of the shift key as the key used for the first layer switch (from layer 1 to layer 2).
Right CTRL + ---
(right CTRL is my compose touch)
No, it makes you wrong.
There is a wrong keyboard layout?
All QWERTY-based layouts.
– sincerely, Dvorak user.
Fellow Dvorak. It's great for typos on touchscreens. Too many times I've mistyped whole and all.
Oh wow. I've actually never used Dvorak on mobile. I always like to tell people that the same thing that made QWERTY good on old mechanical typewriters, the thing that holds it back on modern keyboards, is what makes QWERTY good again in the algorithm-assisted typing of a modern touchscreen.
I wouldn't recommend it for touchscreens tbh. Having the common letters close to each other just causes problems. And autocorrect doesn't seem to understand I'm using a Dvorak layout. I'm just used to it now and like to have my keyboards matching. It's great for physical keyboards though.
What a damn shame for all you Holds up DVORAK users that you're no better than the rest of us filthy QWERTY kids.
https://itotd.com/articles/3528/the-dvorak-keyboard-controversy/
Dvorak. It's a person's name, so only the first letter is capitalised.
Anyway, that article uses a lot of words to come to...basically no conclusion whatsoever. I don't know why anyone would link it when trying to make any sort of a point.
"No conclusion whatsoever" is basically the scientific consensus on whether Dvorak has any effect on efficiency or typing speed. It's hard to get good data because it's hard to isolate other factors and a lot of the studies on it are full of bias or have really small sample sizes (or both).
To anyone thinking of learning Dvorak, my advice is don't. It takes ages to get good at, isn't THAT much better and causes a lot of little annoyances when random programs decide to ignore your layout settings or you sit down at someone else's computer and start touch typing in the wrong layout from muscle memory or games tell you to press "E" when they mean "." or they do say "." but it's so small that you don't know if it's a dot or a comma and then you hit the wrong one and your guy runs forward and you die...
That said, I'm also a Dvorak user and it is very comfortable and satisfying and better than qwerty. Just not enough to be worth all the pain of switching.
It takes ages to get good at
It took me about one week to reach a basic competency, two weeks before I was equal in both (though this was partly because my QWERTY speed had also fallen), one month before I reached my pre-Dvorak average speed, and I capped out at about 30% faster in Dvorak than I was in QWERTY.
(Note: my methodology in testing this was very imperfect. It relied on typing the same passage on each keyboard layout, once per day, changing the passage each week to avoid too much muscle memory. Certainly not scientific, but relatively useful as a demonstrative.)
In a broader sense, my average comfortable typing speed in QWERTY was about 60–70. When speed-typing, I could push that up to 80. And the top speed I would hit in typing games was about 100–105. In Dvorak, those numbers shifted to 80, 100, and 120.
Granted, the comment above (or it might have been one of the very few good points in the article linked from that comment, I forget) made mention of the fact that some of the benefit is not in the keyboard layout itself but in the act of re-learning as an adult. I strongly agree with this. A secondary part that is loosely related to this in practice (though not at all in theory) is that by learning Dvorak you are not just "re-learning as an adult", but you are forced to learn proper typing technique. Hunt and peck obviously doesn't work when looking at your fingers shows you the wrong letters because the keyboard hardware is labelled according to QWERTY. Even a sort of situation where you are mostly touch typing, but imperfectly with the need to glance down occasionally, even if just for reassurance (which is where I was at with QWERTY) does not work with Dvorak. You become—you must become—a fluent typist. This may not be theoretically an advantage inherent to Dvorak, but for so long as the rest of the world is using QWERTY, it certainly is, as a matter of fact, an advantage. And for that reason, even if no other, I do strongly recommend anyone even vaguely considering it to switch.
causes a lot of little annoyances when random programs decide to ignore your layout settings
Not a problem I've encountered very often.
or you sit down at someone else’s computer and start touch typing in the wrong layout from muscle memory
This does happen. But personally I have found that my QWERTY speed is still faster than most people's, even if it's now a lot slower than either my Dvorak speed or what my QWERTY speed used to be. It takes maybe 10 seconds to adjust mentally. And if it's a computer you're going to be using regularly, just add Dvorak to it—it's a simple keyboard shortcut to switch back and forth.
or games tell you to press “E” when they mean “.”
Games are one of the most frustrating, in part because of the inconsistency. The three different ways that different games handle it. My favourite are the ones that just translate back into QWERTY for you. That listen for the physical key press, then display on screen an instruction that assumes QWERTY. My second favourite tends to be in older games only, and it's where it listens for the character you typed; on these it's as easy as just quickly switching back to QWERTY while playing that game. The worst, but still very manageable are where they listen for the physical key press and display the correct letter for that key according to Dvorak. But you quickly learn to associate a key with muscle memory, so it's not really an issue in practice.
Anyway, all of this is wildly off topic. Because my original comment was memeing. Nobody was meant to take it seriously. It was, as the kids say, for the lulz.
That's impressive! It took me way longer to learn. Maybe a month or two? Even longer to feel really comfortable with it.
To be fair though, a colon would be the correct punctuation here.
Yesss em dashes are my babies! They're have more versatility in breaking up sentences than commas IMO, and they don't have as many annoying rules as semi-colons.
But I also write stories as a hobby so thats the reason its something I care about
I'm with you. I used to use a lot more parentheses, but the break is cleaner. I opt for en dashes, though, because I find too em dashes to be too long. That could just be a MSWord preference because I don't distinguish on other platforms.