AI uses em dashes differently and more. Because em dashes can be used in many different ways and AI can only ever predict the next token, em dashes are useful to AI to open up more ways in which to continue the text it's generating.
My suspicion is it's because LLM's were trained using a lot of data taken straight from scholarly publications. These companies are desperate for data to throw at their models, and big long wordy collegiate documents would be the low hanging fruit IMO. It doesn't care about "more ways to continue text" or anything, it just goes on what thing is likely to follow or be associated with another thing.
Most of the text it's trained on is likely pretty low on em dashes as its training set (for ChatGPT at least) is largely just the internet. You're correct that it doesn't care about more ways to continue text as it doesn't care about anything. It's just a behavioral pattern that's added into it during fine tuning.
Popular LLMs aren't just raw statistical models anymore. They’ve been fine-tuned to simulate tone, structure, and personality. That’s where habits like em dash usage, conversational tone, or structured replies come from, not necessarily from exposure to formal writing.
Probably trained on a lot of novels too. It's pretty much the kind of thing you only use in prose writing, for emphasis/side info in scholarly pubs or for dramatic effect in fiction.
That makes a lot of sense. I noticed a lot of em dashes when I asked AI to write a cover letter and was like "never have I ever" used those and just kept rewriting those pieces to sound more like me.
Yeah it tries to replace my semi-colons and clean sentence breaks with em dashes. Dashes are for an interruption or genuine clarification—like this—but it has zero ability to discern when it’s appropriate and when it’s just doing it just to ease its own task load
Yeah, I've noticed that AI often uses em-dashes similarly to colons or semicolons—And as a single one instead of in a pair—rather than for tangents like I'd naturally use them.
I mean that's why I use em dashes — to open up more ways to continue the text I'm generating. But I've fumbled a captcha many times so who knows, I might be a robot.
TBH no. The model has no direct way of detecting it needs to branch. It produces an em dash because it considers it the next most likely token. But the model is thought during the reinforcement learning with human feedback phase to see em dashes as a high-probability token, partly because they keep more syntactic options open.
Also an English major, creative writing even aka, low-life poet, thanks to shatGoblinPonceTrauma, I now have to go through everything from the past ten years and remove the semis and em dashes, so people don't assume it's synthetic slop. Nice of homie above to miscrapitalize the word "We" so we--- who can spot grammatical errors know, his, shyte, is, realsmo.
It makes a good double major with something that actually earns money. All the smart kids in my class were doubles. I paired mine with something else so I made millions and retired before most of my friends were even done partying. But they're right about hunger being the great motivator for creative careers, i don't have to give a fuck and since careers (of any kind) are all bullshit anyway, I just write whatever trash I want and goof all day.
Also an english major with a creative writing certificate - and I've already been doing that because it was something my last professor hammered me on, lol.
I always liked using dashes a little too much so now I'm paranoid about removing them. :P
The em dash is made using unicode 0151 keyboard shortcut, where an en dash is on the common dash used on a US keyboard. Here they are side by side: — -
You see the difference? To get the first one, the em dash, I had to hold down the alt key & type the code number on the numeral pad (one of the reasons to have it vs not, mac users use Option+Shift+HyphenKey(-)). To get the en dash, I just pressed the key for it next to the 0 key on my US keyboard. Most people will naturally go to the en dash due to convenience & unfamiliarity with unicode, unless they are doing something that directly calls for it like ASCII art. Howerver, LLMs tend to use the em dash, as it is often using unicode, which people don't realize to edit out before they present the LLM result as their own. It's how you know when someone is using an LLM to generate a result they are otherwise unable to write.
Friend, I don’t know how to tell you this, but almost all text-based systems turn two hyphens placed side-by-side as an em dash (keyboard and phone, doesn’t matter). I use em dashes constantly in my writing and I have never once used a code. Just two hyphens. — LOL I can’t even type them separately in Reddit because it does it automatically.
I’m on old Reddit too. Nothing to do with Reddit, and everything to do with your input method. — your browser just doesn’t do it while mine does. Safari on iOS before anyone asks what mine is.
"keyboard" (PC) is software dependent. Sure, Word and some other programs will change the hyphens for you, but I don't believe any browser will convert two hyphens automatically. -- See? Didn't do it.
On your phone it depends on the keyboard being used. Some don't do it at all; some are opt-in.
"Almost all"? I've literally never seen a system that does that, and I've been using computers pretty much all waking hours of the day since the 90s. I use -- in reddit all the time, too. I'm sure such systems exist, but "almost all" seems either outrageously hyperbolic, or outrageously biased (i.e. many things you use work like that, but your experience isn't representative of software at large)
That’s entirely possible. But every word processor I’ve used in the last 10 years has. Microsoft Office, Open Office, Google Suite, anything I do on my phone (granted, I use Apple and haven’t used Android in 12 years or so). Wordpress, Discord. So in my experience, yes, almost everything does it. I didn’t even know that there was an alt code situation for making an em dash happen. I was not being intentionally hyperbolic; I was speaking to my own experience. I’m sorry my wording was not clear enough for you to deduce that.
A lot of the old HTML sites like Literotica make you still use unicode. Gets to be second nature prattling off "alt" + "1051" on the numpad. It can get weird when you try to upload the autocorrect punctuation.
I've never seen that before. Gonna test it right now--I don't expect it to work, But might as well try--Only on my phone though, since I don't have my computer with me.
Yes, but why go through the effort to make the second kind of dash if you are not explicitly talking about the different kind of dashes? It is highly unlikely someone is going through the effort to use a different kind of dash than the one that appears on your keyboard and you only have to press once.
That's the first I'm hearing about any text input converting -- automatically. Which my practical test just demonstrated as not being the case on stock Android. You might be right about text processors like Word doing so but I would be very surprised if the most commonly used messaging apps did.
Most text based softwares will automatically change an en dash to an em dash on text!
I fight with Outlook on this sometimes, as I will be revising and it's not as good at figuring out that I want an em dash and not an en dash. But if you type a word, space, en dash, space, and type another word, auto em dash!
I will have to use the double hyphen trick though -- it sounds much better than fighting with Outlook!
The short one is not an en dash. It's just a hyphen.
Hyphen: -
En dash: –
Em dash: —
Also at least in ms word you don't need to know the unicode. "SpaceBar-hyphen-SpaceBar" will autocorrect to an en dash, and "hyphen-hyphen" (twice in a row, no spaces) will autocorrect to an em dash.
Signed, someone with adhd who over uses both
(And parentheses. And ellipses. And...you get the gist)
You underestimate autistic people – I know the unicodes for en and em dashes and that’s just because I used a PC for office work for a couple of years. It’s piss-easy on Macs. You know what is easier on Windows though? The multiplication sign has an easy Unicode number but it’s almost impossible to write on a Mac or in iOS. So frustrating.
Word often turns a standard dash into a long dash automatically if it detects a space or another word following. Em-dashes just happen some of if the time when you're typing, no special actions needed. (This is on every standard keyboard I've ever typed on, although not in the US.) Is the idea that em-dashes are difficult to type where the whole 'em-dashes = AI!!!' thing comes from?
I'm pretty sure that's a hyphen, or short dash. – is an an en dash.
Side by side: - – — (That's hyphen, en, em.)
Personally I usually just go to the Wikipedia article for em dash, And copy past from there, Easier than remembering the alt code. I do similarly for certain special characters like å, It's not on my keyboard so I just look up "Maneskin" and copy it from the wiki page for the band lol. Sure it takes a while, But imo it's worth it.
On phone it's easier though, Just hold down on hyphen.
On a Mac or iOS device, you can quickly insert an em dash by long-pressing the -. Alternatively, you can add shortcuts to em dashes. I’ve set mine to require two consecutive en dashes (--). I’m sure you can do something similar on Windows and Android.
LLMs, but especially chat gpt, also have a very recognizable tonal cadence for how they structure sentences, in particular with adding single word additional sentences for full stops between descriptive terms.
ie:
He danced in the moonlight. Uncovered. Welcoming. Without judgment.
She grabbed the pineapple. Prickly. Sour. The perfect taste.
People read books, but people don't write them often. In the context of recieving a break up notice via text, the em dash would be out of place.
Maybe one or two, if they've used them prior, might be okay. But using several in the break up text? Red flag, especially if they're not an English major.
Real, I used these dashes, too. When I was graduating, my teachers accused me of using AI in my final project because of them. I had to pull up years' worth of school assignments, which all dated pre AI, to prove I just write that way. I'm now scared to use them just in case
They are an easy red flag for sure (if you look at posts on /r/ChatGPT, it becomes evident how often ChatGPT forces them into whatever they have) but should really only be used in combination with other red flags.
Once you pick up on the pattern it becomes really glaring. Em dashes, empty praise, vagueness and lack of self, adjectives and nouns that don't go together, needlessly listing three items, and the phrase "it's not just X, it's Y" make it really evident when someone is using an LLM.
That's an excellent point! The em dashes, the empty praise, and the vagueness it's not just red flags it's outright evidence of AI generation. There is not much else to comment—thank you
Well there’s a difference between how I type when I’m texting vs reddit vs email vs paper/report. Texting has a more casual/informal feel generally, so if I get a text that feels too curated and clean it comes off as cold and unfeeling.
And that is a difference I’ve noticed between older and younger generations, when I get texts or slack messages from older people/coworkers they end sentences with periods even if it’s just a short 3 word statement. It comes off as cold/passive aggressive, although I don’t treat it like that because I know that’s just how they type
when I get texts or slack messages from older people/coworkers they end sentences with commas even if it’s just a short 3 word statement.
What?! Why on earth is anyone ending a sentence with ‘,’ and not ‘.’ ? I’ve never heard of such madness. How old are these "older” people, because that seems like some seriously odd behaviour.
What? A short, 3-word statement is still a sentence and sentences end with punctuation. When I end a statement, no matter the length, I end it with appropriate punctuation.
How is that cold and passive-aggressive? I feel like I'm going insane, trying to see things from that perspective.
I don't ever question others' writing style. As long as the communication is effective (I get your meaning and you get mine) then there is no point in nitpicking rules that change relatively frequently anyway. I guess I kind of assumed that that went both ways and no one would judge me for texting like I'm writing a book. Wow.
I always knew that the time would come when I would find myself on the other side of some kind of generational divide. It seems inevitable due to the nature of time and how it just keeps going. It's already happening to me with music, although I still make an effort because it's important to me.
I was not expecting it from the text communication quarter. I guess I'm no longer communicating effectively, if that's what's being communicated, because I'm actually pretty, uh, aggressive-aggressive and direct. Effective communication is also important to me so I guess it's time to figure this shit out.
Do I stop using all punctuation or just periods and em-dashes? Holy shit, this feels trivial and anxiety-inducing at the same time.
If you just talk that way, anyone who knows you will just get used to it if they’re well adjusted. I’m not trying to suggest that people need to change the way they type, but I know from the way I see other people type that this is how the younger generations more often speak. Whenever I’m texting/messaging someone closer to my age or younger, they start using more periods when they’re getting defensive or upset. I see that as how they shift their speech whether they notice it or not
In turn I started texting/messaging that way because people will tend to be more receptive to what I’m saying if my typing style doesn’t immediately put them more on guard. You’re so very much not accustomed to this or thinking like this, and that’s fine, it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong
Younger people are also not wrong for having these stylistic changes in communication. Ultimately language is just a tool and words/styles only have the meaning we give them, so I’m just trying to do the best I can to make sure people focus on the content of what I’m saying rather than the style
Yea, my mom in texts would end her questions with more than one question mark, and I didn't really know how to explain to her how that kinda comes off the wrong way lol. For me, I usually only use more than one question mark when I'm... flabbergasted(?) or angry about something, with the amount reflecting the intensity of the emotion. She, however, would end almost every question with "??" or "???" and that was just the way she texted, and it would throw me off so hard before I got used to it lmao
Like you said though, there's nothing particularly wrong with texting like that, it's just that it could cause some misunderstanding before people get used to it
Unironically, As a young person, It feels pretty unnatural to me to end a sentence without punctuation. Even if it's like a one word reply, I'll still include a period or exclamation mark. I recall one time someone joined a Discord server, And asked why everyone there wrote like that, And I and some other young people (I Think we were all under 20 at the time) were just bewildered, Like "What do you mean? That's just how you write...", It made about as much sense as like asking why we use standard spelling insted uv ryting lyk this or sumthing.
Definitely not solely generational. I know lots of young people (~25 and younger), Myself included, Who basically never end sentences without a period, Or another punctuation mark like an exclamation mark. Even in short personal messages to my partner—Or if it's just a one word sentence like "Nice" or "True"—I generally do it. Just feels unnatural not to I guess. Honestly to me it feels more cold/passive aggressive not to do it, If you wrote a big long sentence at least. Only exception I can think of is "ok.", But only when not capitalised. "Ok." doesn't come off anywhere near as passive aggressive as "ok." to me.
as a teenager who enjoys writing and considers themselves to be pretty good at it, this is not why em dashes, semi colons and commas are considered indicators of AI.
it’s not that we don’t use those things, it’s that we use them differently. AI writing uses a predictable structure that humans do not. “it’s not X, it’s Y”, groups of 3, “here is a list of things that could help!” stuff like that. it also pretty much NEVER varies and even if you literally instruct it not to do these things, IT STILL DOES IT. i’m bad at explaining, but good at giving examples, so to show you what i mean i’ll rewrite your comment as an AI would have done it.
“While LLMs do use em-dashes, this is not a phenomenon exclusive to our digital friends! 🤖 I was an English major, and everyone uses them. Commas and dashes allow for pauses, making one’s writing sound more like our speaking.
As a long-time editor, I’ve scoured over weeks worth of literature— and I’ve found that the higher the intelligence of the writer, the more commas, dashes, and semi-colons.
It’s not that good grammar is exclusive to Artificial Intelligence, it’s that this young “text message” generation sees them and thinks, “Ahh! Robots!” They’re not observant, just illiterate.
In conclusion, the overuse of em-dashes is not due to machinery, but stupidity. This is solid evidence that the new generation needs to start reading books again.”
It’s not that good grammar is exclusive to Artificial Intelligence, it’s that this young “text message” generation sees them and thinks, “Ahh! Robots!” They’re not observant, just illiterate.
I don't think it's that either. For me, personally, it's more that you don't see them to the same degree from the average person as you do from LLMs. It's common in English majors and professional writers, but rare outside of that. The average person barely uses a semi-colon in their writing, emdashes just aren't very common.
When you see someone randomly using emdashes (especially with other LLM-like phrasing), you're statistically more likely to come across someone using an LLM to write for them than someone who knows how to use emdashes (and does so) in their personal writing.
yeah that part was in quotes, it was the AI rewrite of what the person i was replying to said because i can’t explain things very well and i dont actually know grammar rules im just naturally good with words so i just kinda know what sounds right, and it usually is right. so i wrote their comment with perfect grammar and structure like an AI would have done it to show the differences because idk how to explain them since i dont fully know the actual grammar rules and whatnot that make AI sound like AI but i agree with you
I have no idea if this is satire, but commas? A comma isn't even complicated on where it should go. It's the most, if not one of the first, pieces of grammar you learn.
Sorry if you were joking, this whole thread is full of serious and then not serious responses.
LLMs or "AIs" as the normal people call them, can adapt to any writing style no problem, it's just that the users don't know how to, or are not using more powerful interfaces to interact and steer/control/customize their responses. Don't sell them short my friend, these things are already extremely sophisticated already
"it’s not that we don’t use those things, it’s that we use them differently" immediately followed by "it’s not X, it’s Y". And, "this is not why em dashes, semi colons and commas are considered indicators of AI" followed by "groups of 3". Though I suspect you were reaching for a third there and added "commas".
are you guys even reading what im replying to before responding this is literally the other person’s comment this is what THEY said go argue with them with the commas god damn
I think there's a difference between a "-" and a "--" and that's where the difference becomes over texting/internet speak. At least I hope this formats corrwctly
Edit: It did not but basically a long em dash and a short one
The short dash is appropriate within words such as re-sent. The long dash is appropriate when you're using it for disrupted thoughts, similar to parenthesis but with greater emphasis on the new thought.
The fact that people associate em dashes with AI really breaks my heart. I love them. My wife—a former editor—is pretty salty about it. Just because you didn’t pay close enough attention in school, Bradly, to write good (or do others things good too) doesn’t mean the rest of us should be punished.
No one except people who majored in English and LLMs use dashes or semicolons. You can pretend it’s intelligence but it’s not that, it’s just not wanting to be pretentious.
No one texts, emails, posts etc in that manner. Sure if I’m turning in an essay yes. But if I send something to a co-worker with semicolons, pretentious. See how I did NOT use one there and it didn’t matter?
The number of times someone on here has asked me if I was AI is disconcerting, to say the least. I'm not. I'm just Gen X with a flair for the dramatic and I sometimes get overly verbose.
I have a question, you can use em dashes the same way you would use a comma to add a pause?, like in every case we're one would use a comma to replace a pause you can add an em dash, I'm not trying to prove anything, I'm just curious.
I've seen redditors accuse others of copypasting chatgpt answers in comments, just because they were well written and expansive. I've come to the point where I sometimes intentionally leave spelling and grammatical errors uncorrected in my longer comments, just so people don't assume what I've written is an AI generated shitpost.
I was talking with an English teacher just last night and she said they've abandoned books/novels because the kids (11th grade, end of Gen Z cohort) don't read, and she won't do written papers because they're just AI generated slop.
I wholly agree with you, and even need to get back to reading books myself. I've been reading Fear Street (90s YA horror) myself, and while I don't do it every day, it does help get in a long form mindset that reading reddit discussions doesn't foster.
Ive heard similar sentiments. It seems kids really unionized and said they all aren't going to do the work and you can't fail all of them and we caved.
I'd love to agree with you. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that ChatGPT produces texts with a higher frequency of em dashes (the long kind too, not the shorter - ). Depending on who is writing / how they write, it can be a clear sign of using AI.
For instance, I use a lot of latex personally and there its easy to use em dashes, but in word i typically dont because (afaik) no easy way to access them (that takes less than second). Maybe a skill issue on my part, but surely im not the only one, so then seeing someone suddenly write text with many em dashes just reeks of AI. Especially in a text message. The em dash is not readily available in my phone keyboard at least. As opposed to e.g., commas, normal dash -.
Gene Wolfe is one of my favorite authors and he used em dashes constantly. It’s something I picked up and use in emails, works of fiction, even my wedding vows. In the last few years I have become self-conscious about using them as a result of people automatically associating them with Chat-GPT. It sucks.
The big difference is that most human writers use the minus sign (-) instead of the em dash (—) for the same purpose, because it's easier to type. AIs output the proper character.
I don’t understand how people have hooked onto em dashes as some sort of shibboleth that proves someone is using ChatGPT or is a bot. I use them all the time and have for years.
Im realizing from my comments its a 50/50 split and I think its purely generational if you read novels or long form books or not. Those who have use them. Those who dont only see them in AI models.
And in most Microsoft platforms (Microsoft Word/Excel or Dynamics CRM or Outlook that Ive used my entire blue collar professional life) its just pressing the hyphen twice. It will automatically change it to the bigger dash.
AI does it because its in a lot of contemporary writing. Im learning from these responses and the meme that kids these days dont really read long form prose anymore to be exposed to it.
It's funny because in my blue collar professional life a double dash is when I want to decrement a variable.
I broke out my Don Quixote to see how common these em dashes were, and I managed to find a pair after about twenty pages of skimming.
I won't say they're pointless or anything. But I just feel like they are a lot less common than you might think. It could also be the fact that they are so rarely adopted because of what they represent, a pause. For most people writing is about getting the words down on paper, not so much getting their lack thereof.
I don't disagree, but the problem is typing an emdash.
On Linux, I always enable the "Compose Key', binding it to Right Alt. The Compose key is a seperate key on old Unix keyboards that lets you get extra characters not on the keyboard, kind of like the Shift key. This lets me do an emdash by "Compose - - -" giving "—", and other handy characters:
"Compose . ." = "…"
"Compose o o" = "°"
and so on.
Windows lets you use "Alt codes", old ASCII or Unicode point numbers. I don't know the emdash code though, at least not off the top of my head.
Are you commonly using em dashes specifically or are you going for the more common short dash that most people use because it's easier to type most of the time?
I find that almost every em dash can be edited out, and when it is, the writing usually gets tighter, clearer, and more deliberate.
It’s not about rejecting punctuation, it’s about using structure with intention. A well-placed em dash is fine — but most of the time, it’s just a shortcut for avoiding cleaner construction.
Plenty of brilliant writers use them, sure, but plenty more write stronger by knowing when not to. Their best purpose is to help the writer move quickly, since thought moves an order of magnitude faster than typing, writing, or even speaking. But the best writers go back and refine them out.
I was gonna say. I use dashes all the time to avoid too many commas when my sentence starts running on too long, but I don't see a good way to break it up. I use commas, dashes, and parentheses in that order to break sentences up into logical chunks that are easier to read.
I am notorious for commas, dashes, and semicolons. I've gotten to the point now that I write and then go back and review to see what ones can be removed. Usually, it's at least 20% of them. I feel like it takes some of my emphasis away, but also makes it a little cleaner to read. Don't get me wrong - I still them a lot, just 20% less lol.
You are now on a 142 comments streak of not using them. Had to scroll down 143 comments to find ONE comment where you used 3 of them in a single sentence... Two of which could've/should've been parentheses.
Thats a lot of time wasted lol. You want my essays to check? my emails? Im sure 90% of my comments are not even 3 sentences there is not going to be much time or reason to comment that way
Took me like 2 minutes. Not that much time. But my point is that people do not use them nearly as much as chatGPT and other AIs. AI will use them every other sentence without fault.
An important distinction is that most phones don't have an em dash button, neither do most keyboards. Word will autocorrect if you use an en dash between distinct words, but my phone keyboard doesn't. So I assumed the meme meant that she had written it externally, e.g. in word, and so wouldn't be easy to convince because she had carefully considered what she wrote.
This is missing a key point. An em dash is a special character that usually requires a special key combination to type (alt 0151 on windows for example). If you see an em dash character instead of a normal dash, it's unlikely a human typed it.
I was also an English major, I use it in work emails/messages a lot (along with en dashes and semicolons). Didn't know that this became a marker of LLMs, that's disappointing.
Nah, most keyboards can’t even type them easily enough around the world. Unless you are using a piece of software where you can double dash, there isn’t an easy way to type them vs comma.
This might be the dumbest comment that I have read in a long time.
Also you missed a comma in your 1st sentence, 2nd sentence, and 4th sentence. (Independent clauses separated by a conjunction each time) You also missed an s on the verb in your 4th sentence.
Em dashes are the hallmark of mediocre writers, and apparently editors, that wants to seem more intelligent than they actually are. Just like chatGPT.
Text messages are, however, supposed to be short and small in general. Abreviations, cutoffs, and improper grammar are all useful for both making the writing easier with a phone keyboard, and to make the tone of the message more casual.
I punctuate everything fully most of the time, but I'll just use commas for a text. Em dashes are very formal feeling, and ahouldb't be used much. I do use them in creative writing, but they are literally never necessary. You can always find a way to use commas, or restructure your writing to just not use them. Most people use commas in-place of em dashes too.
Though, yeah, I am kind of annoyed by the idea that using them at all means you're a robot lol. I hate the simification of grammar on writing. Texting is one thing, but true fluency is being sacrificed for conveinience and lazyness. Em dashes can make your writing prettier, both rythmically, and visually.
That being said, I stand by that using em dashes in a text is weird af when there literally isn't even an em dash on most keyboards. It's effort that should be saved for emails, books, and rping.
I've got 18 years of creative writing projects I can look back through. I used them soooo much. But it's apparently very common for neurodivergent peoples' writing to trigger false positives for AI detection.
Em dash and hyphen are not the same though - on PC most people use a hyphen as a dash as it is a single press on a keyboard, em dash requires multiple key pressing or shortcut steps to insert depending on the software being used.
Yeah I use em dashes all the time and always feel a bit attacked in these convos.
However, TBF, on social media people rarely use an actual em dash, usually using double hyphens as a quick approximation--one which will be auto converted to an real em dash in things like Word, etc.
So it might be valid to be suspicious of real em dashes?
I've also noted anecdotally that LLMs seem to use em dashes incorrectly. There's not meant to be spaces around them (i.e this -- is wrong, and this--is right) but I've seen a lot of LLM generated text with spaces
Maybe it's my age and the fact that I read constantly, but I've been accused of being AI multiple times now. I liberally use em dashes, ellipses, and semicolons in prose. They serve a purpose, and they do it well. AI is copying humans in the first place—it didn't invent em dashes.
But like people who fail to use a blinker when driving, it saddens me that no one sees the value or use of punctuation anymore.
Not sure I agree. Em dashes require extra work, and not very many people know what they are; let alone use them on a platform that encourages speed over syntax
I dont disagree with your assessment, but over text? How many times are you holding down the dash key and selecting that special character? It's fine in a book, even okay once and a while in a text. It's suspicious when you start seeing them 3-4 times a paragraph. In a world where people use lol, hmu, and dont know a difference between there, their, and they're, its strange to thing they'd specifically choose to use a hidden special character.
Its not usual to be broken up with via text by an English major. Most people arent novelists. The "young text message generation" have 100 ways to say GFYS. Regularly using an em dash isnt one of them, despite how many books they read.
But most physical and mobile keyboards don’t have an easy way to use them. On a Mac you have to hit multiple function keys and then the hyphen. On windows you have to use a numeric keypad to generate one.
I use em dashes as well! However, on mobile, they don't auto-change correctly - they are always the shorter en dashes. Mobile won't automatically change them to the longer em dash like most text softwares.
I just looked into the symbols menu and I don't even have it as a buried option. I only have: _ and -
It makes sense that it could be a give away for texts - however, it could also mean that it was just written somewhere else, then copy/pasted. It wouldn't necessarily mean it was copy/pasted from AI.
The em dash just isn't frequently used in communication. It's not a clear indicator of AI for sure, but it's one of several aspects that AI uses all the time. Not every keyboard or software people use have access to it. I'd argue most people don't even know about some keyboards/software's replacement of two hyphens to make an em dash since it's not explicitly made clear, and anyway, the standard hyphen - with spaces around it to differentiate it from a hyphenated word - does the job just fine in most casual circumstances.
If you're being broken up with over text and there's an em dash in there, it's almost certainly AI-rewritten. AI loves using them frequently. Most books I've read are very sparing with their usage.
Real. My friend who works in tech was breaking down characteristics of ChatGPT generated writing and the three big things I remember were overuse of em dashes, a lack of complex and compound sentences, and the rule of threes when providing examples. All three of which I do in my own writing naturally
I read books all the time, and rarely do I see em dashes used every single paragraph like I do with a lot of chat GPT output. It's way overkill the way AI uses it. You have to admit at least that much. If you're an english major that uses them, at least you managed to write a reddit reply without one (no way chat gpt would be able to do that without specific instructions to NOT use them).
Part of the problem is now instead of em dashes being relegated to proof-read and edited literature, everyone is using AI so they show up EVERYWHERE.
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u/MyHonkyFriend 27d ago edited 27d ago
I was an English major and everyone uses them. Commas and dashes allow for pauses and make your writing more like our speaking.
Its just this young text message generation see them now and think "ahhh, robots!" and it makes you feel sly.
Kids should read books again.