I’ve always used it, although usually just in dash format for the sake of ease. It comes as easily as full stops and commas.
Why is everyone just now discovering it? I’ve just completed a job application and went and edited my dashes out in case they followed this trend of thinking it indicates AI.
It’s actually genuinely really annoying me that people who have lived under rocks or who’ve never written anything since school are accusing people who’ve got a reasonable grasp of English of being AI.
Although it makes startlingly normal the, what I thought at the time was very strange, episode where I’d written something for a colleague and he asked ‘what are all those dashes for?’
We went to the same school and he’s only five years younger.
It’s beyond annoying. Lots of us know how to and regularly do use an em dash. It’s more astounding that so many people think it’s unusual.