It's not that it isn't automatically an indicator of AI generation, rather — it is used frequently by AI in a way that doesn't follow the natural flow of human conversation.
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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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I don't use phones
The anti-ai hysteria on the site is getting a little silly, and I'm by no means an ai advocate.
real writers use the hyphen - like this - instead because they can't be bothered to type an actual em dash and they've long since disabled any form of auto correct on any program they type into.
Yeah, the differing use-cases for the various dashes just seems like an anachronism that's already basically faded away. Like the use of double-spaces, which is just an old typewriter thing... or QWERTY itself, but that's a pain to overcome.
real writers use the hyphen - like this - instead because they can't be bothered to type an actual em dash
I think you defined lazy writers, not real writers.
lazy is real, at least until they train the ais to intentionally not capitalize letters and stuff like that
My autistic ass taking notes on how not to sound like AI when I write shit.
Alt 0151. I use it often and have instructed students on the difference between a semicolon, a period, and an em dash and when it's best to use each of them. It helps me write how I speak. I guess eventually someone's going to accuse me of using ChatGPT because of my em dashes and idk, they can kiss my ass?
I hope you include use of the en-dash too. I use them 2–3 times a week.
it'd be a funny bit if op used ai to write this
Everything under the line was chat gpt, everything above was chat gp me
lol i stumbled into the truth like inspector closeau!
i was 90% sure 😭
I swear he did
as a frequent user of the em dash I find this whole AI tell thing distressing
As an infrequent user of it, same.
I got a bit angry yesterday, when someone said (in the thread this is a continuation of): no human being uses em-dash.
Saying only AI uses these is dehumanizing.
I guess that I am autistic plays a role in me finding it really bad.
Funny how it used to be a shibboleth for lawyers and now it's a tell for AI. Em dashes are very useful punctuation marks though — being able to chain sentences together for longer than intended is very helpful for writing without thinking — what I do — or just being generally chaotic in writing.
just being generally chaotic in writing
ADHD thoughts within thoughts. Instead of using two layers of parentheses, substituting one for dashes.
and then you want to close it with a smiley (or is it emoticon (I never really used that term even back in the day ... and today everyone just calls them emojis :))) and it looks like a triple chin
I just abuse commas
I love using colons in a rare sort of way: like this. Like, the colon is followed by something that builds upon the first part, or some sort of comment on it or whatever: I love writing like one of those famous old authors whose writing styles are fucking weird. Like the author of Trainspotting: I’d be a great writer if I could write something meatier than a Mastodon post.
I also love reading oldish writing, like pre-20th century where the rules were far looser.
We take it for granted, but mathematics also used to be quite loosey-goosey until it was formalized by David Hilbert in the 1920s. Dude was an absolute legend, I mean just look at him:
I was always really bad at math, because of the way it was taught to me and idk how to explain further.
Lawyers 🤝 English majors
—Objection!
Fun fact, the em dash is also the standard punctuation for dialogues in books written in Portuguese, like:
"How are you?"
"Not very well," she answered.
— Como você está?
— Não muito bem — respondeu ela.
Sorry to have to tell you this, but Portugal was created by AI.
The quotation dash is also used in a number of other languages, I mainly see it in Norwegian-language news articles. You'll also find it in some older English-language works like Ulysses.
Finally ⸻ the 3-em dash will have its moment
Mmm
Em persecution has to end
This sounds like something an AI would write
Sure does
I use those a lot—though without spaces. The spaces give it away .
I've been using the em dash a lot — decades! — due to influence from reading a lot of classics from the 1800s when I was a child, and I do it with the spaces around it for visibility, readability, and clarity. The spaces don't give anything away.
I don't care - stop using long dashes. It's a useless character and the less you use it the easier it is to discern AI slop without even having to think. It'll only be a year or two before ChatGPT stops using it, so don't undermine a very cool and assuredly temporary useful discernment tool.
A normal length dash does everything you want. You know why nobody knows em-dash existed before? Because nobody ever noticed you using it and everyone reads it as a normal dash.
You can have your em-dash back in a couple years.
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In high school, an English teacher once told us she over used em dashes and her teacher told her you can't just dash through your papers. I tried to avoid their over use after that, which made me learn the other ways to organize my (chaotic) thoughts.
Needless to say, I think that it's a tell of young writers more than AI. The overuse is because the author isn't comfortable with using colons, parenthesis, or commas - the things that the em dash can substitute for grammatically.
A good writer understands offsetting with a dash adds more emphasis than commas (neutral) or parenthesis (lower emphasis). Overuse is a sign of either immaturity or AI. Since there's a lot of immature writers on the internet (and have been since the eternal summer began), it really isn't useful as a tell online.
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