Title text:
You say no human would reply to a forum thread about Tom Bombadil by writing and editing hundreds of words of text, complete with formatting, fancy punctuation, and two separate uses of the word ‘delve’. Unfortunately for both of us, you are wrong.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3126/
Seeing any em dash in the wild makes me immediately suspicious
I loooove using m dashes. They’re just so—expressive.
Yeah, I’m 42 yrs old. A long time ago I sacrificed what lvl of English I did know in order to use “lol” - I’m not giving up em dashes.
That’s probably part of the joke
There’s always one good litmus test, if you can ask someone live before they have a chance to do a Google search: ask what the alt code is for an em dash.
If they don’t immediately answer 0151, they’re full of shit.
Compose key, hyphen, hypen. Because while it’s a less common usage, visually I prefer the shorter en dash – over the em dash — anyway.
Also for people missing the Unix-style compose key on Windows: https://wincompose.info/. Memorising numeric codes is for chumps :)
OH MY GOD, I CAN GET A COMPOSE KEY ON WINDOWS
Thank you
Bot account obvs
I feel like this is more likely to lead you astray than anything. An LLM bot will immediately know the alt code, while a real person will only know it if they use Windows. Lots of people use Linux, or mobile keyboards.
I always just google ‘em dash’ then ctrl+c it.
Or if they start explaining what a compose key is; also human
What if they don’t know the code and just use a keyshift instead?
Throw them into a lake, I guess. If they sink and drown, they’re innocent. If they float, you know they’re full of (buoyant) shit (and can then safely burn them at the stake if you want to).
Ah, welcome back, Witch Test…
Opt shift hyphen. What’s an alt code? 🍏
Hmmm, I think to know for sure, we’ll have to throw your device into a lake. Apples float, so if it’s a genuine Designed By Apple in California™ computer that supports that option, it won’t sink and then we’ll know you’re telling the truth.
meh - I just use a dash and move on.
That’s fine, LLMs use mainly em dashes so there would be no confusion, hence that being the litmus test.
for me it’s just altgr+caps followed by tapping - thrice, way better use of the caps lock key. thank u xmodmap