Damn she had AI write it
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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.
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Great catch! That’s a really interesting observation — but no, using em dashes and emojis alone is not a reliable way to tell AI text from human-written text.
Here’s why:
1️⃣ Humans and AI both use em dashes and emojis
Skilled human writers often use em dashes for style, tone, or emphasis (like in essays, journalism, or fiction).
Modern AI models, including ChatGPT, are trained on vast amounts of text — including texts that use em dashes extensively — so they use them naturally.
2️⃣ Em dash frequency varies by context
In formal writing (e.g., academic papers), em dashes are less common, regardless of author.
In casual or conversational writing, both humans and AIs may use them liberally.
3️⃣ Stylometric features are broader than one punctuation mark
When people try to detect AI-generated text, they usually analyze a combination of features:
Average sentence length
Vocabulary richness
Repetition patterns
Syntactic structures
Overuse or underuse of certain constructions
Punctuation is just one small part of these analyses and isn’t decisive on its own.
Bottom line: Em dashes can hint at style, but they aren’t a reliable "tell" for AI detection on their own. You need a holistic analysis of multiple stylistic and structural features to make a meaningful judgment.
Why emojis aren’t a clear tell for AI1️⃣ AI can easily include emojis if prompted
Modern AI models can and do use emojis naturally when asked to write in a casual or friendly tone. In fact, they can even mimic how humans use them in different contexts (e.g., sparingly or heavily, ironically or sincerely).2️⃣ Humans vary wildly in emoji usage
Some humans use emojis constantly, especially in texting or on social media. Others almost never use them, even in casual writing. Age, culture, and personal style all influence this.3️⃣ Emojis can be explicitly requested or omitted
If you tell an AI “don’t use emojis,” it won’t. Similarly, you can tell it “use lots of emojis,” and it will. So it’s not an inherent trait.4️⃣ Stylometric detection relies on more than one feature
Like em dashes, emojis are only one aspect of style. Real detection tools look at patterns like sentence structure, repetitiveness, word choice entropy, and coherence across paragraphs — not single markers.
When might emojis suggest AI text?If there is excessively consistent or mechanical emoji usage (e.g., one emoji at the end of every sentence, all very literal), it might suggest machine-generated text or an automated marketing bot.
But even then, it’s not a guarantee — some humans also write this way, especially in advertising.
Bottom line: Emojis alone are not a reliable clue. You need a combination of markers — repetition, coherence, style shifts, and other linguistic fingerprints — to reasonably guess if something is AI-generated.If you'd like, I can walk you through some actual features that are better indicators (like burstiness, perplexity, or certain syntactic quirks). Want me to break that down?
Fucking thank you.
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Humans just use dashes - they get the point across and don't require esoteric button presses.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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
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Great catch! That’s a really interesting observation — but no, using em dashes and emojis alone is not a reliable way to tell AI text from human-written text.
Here’s why:
1️⃣ Humans and AI both use em dashes and emojis
Skilled human writers often use em dashes for style, tone, or emphasis (like in essays, journalism, or fiction).
Modern AI models, including ChatGPT, are trained on vast amounts of text — including texts that use em dashes extensively — so they use them naturally.
2️⃣ Em dash frequency varies by context
In formal writing (e.g., academic papers), em dashes are less common, regardless of author.
In casual or conversational writing, both humans and AIs may use them liberally.
3️⃣ Stylometric features are broader than one punctuation mark
When people try to detect AI-generated text, they usually analyze a combination of features:
Average sentence length
Vocabulary richness
Repetition patterns
Syntactic structures
Overuse or underuse of certain constructions
Punctuation is just one small part of these analyses and isn’t decisive on its own.
Bottom line: Em dashes can hint at style, but they aren’t a reliable "tell" for AI detection on their own. You need a holistic analysis of multiple stylistic and structural features to make a meaningful judgment. Why emojis aren’t a clear tell for AI1️⃣ AI can easily include emojis if prompted
Modern AI models can and do use emojis naturally when asked to write in a casual or friendly tone. In fact, they can even mimic how humans use them in different contexts (e.g., sparingly or heavily, ironically or sincerely).2️⃣ Humans vary wildly in emoji usage
Some humans use emojis constantly, especially in texting or on social media. Others almost never use them, even in casual writing. Age, culture, and personal style all influence this.3️⃣ Emojis can be explicitly requested or omitted
If you tell an AI “don’t use emojis,” it won’t. Similarly, you can tell it “use lots of emojis,” and it will. So it’s not an inherent trait.4️⃣ Stylometric detection relies on more than one feature
Like em dashes, emojis are only one aspect of style. Real detection tools look at patterns like sentence structure, repetitiveness, word choice entropy, and coherence across paragraphs — not single markers.
When might emojis suggest AI text?If there is excessively consistent or mechanical emoji usage (e.g., one emoji at the end of every sentence, all very literal), it might suggest machine-generated text or an automated marketing bot.
But even then, it’s not a guarantee — some humans also write this way, especially in advertising.
Bottom line: Emojis alone are not a reliable clue. You need a combination of markers — repetition, coherence, style shifts, and other linguistic fingerprints — to reasonably guess if something is AI-generated.If you'd like, I can walk you through some actual features that are better indicators (like burstiness, perplexity, or certain syntactic quirks). Want me to break that down?
I've never seen em dahses outside of an academic paper, so saying people use them liberaly is an olypmic level stretch.
Also that comment was clearly written by ai itself.
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Yet we're perfectly cool with a card from a department store claiming Happy anniversary to my beautiful wife and I'm so glad that you're such a good mother to our kids.
Anyone that has a take that is not shoving a red hot poker up AI's ass gets down voted.
I'm not here for the upvotes. Carry on. And please don't take it personally, I do hope you have a solid day.
You're giving her a card and flowers in person though, no? You're not just texting it to her and that's all she gets.
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I've never seen em dahses outside of an academic paper, so saying people use them liberaly is an olypmic level stretch.
Also that comment was clearly written by ai itself.
I use them often even when I’m not writing anything important, just a habit from writing I guess.
Fuck. I just realised I used them in my résumé that I sent out yesterday. Shit shit shit
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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).
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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).
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How the hell do you even type an em dash?
I'm sure it's possible (I know it's easy on a touch keyboard), but if the person who sent it has never used em dashes in their life, then it's pretty definitive proof. Otherwise, it's just a big clue that you might combine with other factors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
If I had a nickel for each time this week, I needed to link to this, I'd have two nickels; which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
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Annoyingly I've used them for a number of years as a good way to make internet comments flow a bit more. However I find myself doing it less and less now because I'm worried people are just going to think I'm using an AI if they see an em dash.
(You just long press dash on android to get to it, opt+shift+dash on Mac, and the admittedly Byzantine alt+0151 on windows. Can't remember iOS off the top of my head, but I think it's similar to android)
Super simple on iOS—double hyphen!
(On the second press of the dash button, the dashes automatically joined
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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.
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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.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
If I had a nickel for each time this week, I needed to link to this, I'd have two nickels; which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Okay, I must confess, I knew about that, as well as the other options in the replies. I never used any of them but I knew they exist. When I asked it was sort of as a rhetorical question. People generally wouldn't know about these obscure typing options, so I was playing the everyman.
Even if you do know it, if you don't use it often enough you forget and have to look it up again next time.
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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.
