Short and long dashes in GPT texts.

Let's deal with this topic once and for all.

I often see the same thing in Treds: someone assures me that long dashes are a blatant GPT text feature And even thinks they should be replaced (OMG) in text with hyphens!

Actually, it's much simpler than that.

1. A long dash is a norm of the Russian language. It is placed between parts of a sentence, like a comma or period.

2. A hyphen is not a dash. It's just «out of habit» because there is a hyphen on the keyboard and no real dash. Because of this, many people's minds turn the hyphen into a «short dash», even though it is a different sign.

3. «Short» and «long» dashes - is a term from typography. It's what designers and typesetters say: en dash (-) and em dash (-). It has almost nothing to do with punctuation.

4. ChatGPT writes text correctly, so he puts a dash. People are used to hyphens in correspondence and social networks, and when the text is written according to the norms, it seems «too correct» and as if it were «GPT-ish».

5. How to use this in practice? If you want to write correctly, put a long dash (-). If you want to create the effect of a rambling and lively text - you can put a hyphen (-), I don't see anything wrong with it.

But forcing an AI model to misspell on purpose makes no sense. It doesn't make the text more «alive», it just breaks punctuation. You can delve deeper into the topic of hyphens and dashes at article.