A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash

Broken link and overall reaction

• Initial irony: the HN submission broke because an em dash in the URL was replaced by a simple hyphen, which itself became part of the joke.
• Many commenters found the post and its “civil disobedience” tone genuinely funny, even after learning it was LLM-assisted.

How to type em/en dashes in practice

• Several comments share platform-specific methods: Linux Compose key, macOS Option/Shift combinations, Windows Alt+numeric codes, and editor digraphs.
• Some argue shortcuts are “simple” once learned; others say memorizing them is a real barrier, so most people stick to the hyphen-minus.
• A few suggest remapping useless keys (Insert, Caps Lock) to Compose.

Usage, history, and literary norms

• Debate over whether em dashes and semicolons were ever widespread. Some claim they were niche; others counter with early–mid 20th century examples full of dashes and semicolons.
• Noted differences between fiction and nonfiction, and across individual authors and European languages (e.g., em dash as dialogue marker).
• Several people say they use semicolons frequently, others almost never; programmers are seen as more comfortable with them.

Typographic purism vs pragmatism

• Strong enthusiasm for “proper” typography: em/en dashes, true ellipsis, curly quotes, text figures, small caps, Oxford comma.
• Pushback: typographic snobbery is mocked; some dislike distinctions between dash types at all, calling them pretentious.
• Specific gripes include quote–punctuation rules in English and two spaces after a period.

Em dash, AI, and style signaling

• Many note that overuse of em dashes has become a perceived “tell” of LLM-generated text.
• Responses vary:
  • Some have reduced or abandoned em-dash use to avoid being mistaken for AI.
  • Others refuse to change style “because of AI paranoia” and even double down on em-dash use in protest.
  • Some claim they now spot AI text by dash spacing; others say both spaced and unspaced forms appear in AI and human writing, so this is unreliable.
• There’s broader concern that AI has flattened style into repetitive patterns (including dashes), making writing feel formulaic.

Cultural and educational angles

• Several comments frame this as a largely American anxiety, linking it to teaching trends emphasizing radical simplicity and to low functional literacy statistics.
• Others argue the real issue is that many people simply never learned nuanced punctuation, so em dashes feel alien or showy.