To be fed the em dash being conflated with AI?

[MyWarmOchreHare]

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.

I think a lot of people have heard ‘em dashes are a sign of AI’ and assumed this means all em or en dashes, and go scuttling off to spout their new wisdom on LinkedIn. In my experience, it’s only when someone writing in UK English suddenly has US-style dashes all over the shop.

They’re also suddenly writing phrases like ‘It’s not just punctuation – it’s a revolution! It’s inspiring, motivating – and impossible to ignore. We’re not just writers – we’re trailblazing troubadours. So let’s flip the script. Be authentic, real – and human. And not just write it – but feel it.'

Ha ha, I should have refreshed my screen and seen this before getting myself wound up with my own post!

For me, I tend to recognise the AI "tone" first and then I'll look for em dashes as a sort of confirmation, and 90% of the time find them.

I admit I am slightly guilty of noticing an em dash and then wondering if it's ChatGPT, but if I notice it that way around, then the writing probably doesn't have the ChatGPT style, so it's more 50/50 whether the author has used ChatGPT to tidy up their own writing due to something like EAL or dyslexia, or they just tend to like em dashes themselves and prefer to use them.

I do find em dash is rarely seen "organically" online. Perhaps in articles, but not typically on social media or anywhere people write casually. I don't find that my web browser autocorrects -- [two hyphens] at all (watch it do it now, and prove me wrong!) I do use hyphens quite a lot where I ought to use an em dash but because it's so commonly used that way, I don't worry about it not technically being the right symbol. I wouldn't go out of my way to find the symbol on my phone keyboard.

I do remember an English teacher saying to my class that we ought to use a semicolon any time we want to insert a dash, so I tend to do that for any kind of formal writing anyway.

Some people don't know, and have asked for clarification.

In any case, when I was at school in the good old days and they taught punctuation properly, we were told to avoid the use of dashes. They are rarely necessary and should be used sparingly, if at all.

The em dash has been around for a long time - Emily Dickinson used it in her poems. Word doesn’t autocorrect to an em dash for me. If I use US AI such as Goblin Tools or Quillbot it autocorrects to an em dash and I have to replace it with a hyphen or a comma. If you are studying for a degree it’s a red flag for AI. If it’s for work it’s not such a big deal, although I correct them anyway.

Sometimes I think my life is boring and I'm too dull. And then I find threads like this and realise there's a long long way to go before I need to worry.

Fascinating.

See, I think I do write like this. That’s exactly how I’d often use the dash.

So glad to read that a few other people on here have no idea what this is talking about. I've written and edited all my working life, have occasionally used hyphens with/without spacing but had never heard of en or em.

Re. the AI connection, it sounds as though the longer dashes are a sign of US English rather than of AI per se; this makes sense as most AI generators tend to originate from US English (and if training will see more of it). AI is currently usually fairly easy to spot, but I suspect this will change over time. Personally I always include trypos in my copy so that it doesn't look like AI.

The thing is, if you work in a global environment, you will find people who use Americanisms in their writing, particularly people for whom English is not their first language. Assuming it's AI is not great.

I use em-dashes because I was brought up in the States and it's just a habit. At work, I have colleagues from Spain, Germany, India, China, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, France, and Bulgaria, off the top of my head. It is very likely that some of them will have learnt some American English at some point.

I lived in the US for a year and managed a US team for 10, often spending time over there, so that may be why I really like them.

Never really paid much attention until I started reading romantasy written by US authors. I think they work well in that genre. But I don't overuse to the extent that they do.

Oh yes, I use dashes in that way too. What I meant was it’s not just the dashes but the way they’re often combined with over-excited phrasing, the repetitive ‘rule of three’, and the overused ‘It’s not just a project - it’s a revolution!’ that ChatGPT churns out. When I read text that has all those elements, I know what they’ve been up to. 😀