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Where do they think chatgpt for them from? I've been overusing em dashes since I was a baby tech worker intern in 1999 ;)

As one who has always overused em dashes — now and in my days as a working journalist — I sympathize.

Higgledy-piggledy Emily Dickinson Liked to use dashes Instead of full stops. Nowadays, faced with such Idiosyncrasy, Critics and editors Send for the cops. -- Wendy Cope

See also: Emily Dickinson

The proof you wrote to yourself is that you are using them wrong! Em-dashes do not have spaces on either side. En-dashes do have a space on either side .

I was busting them shits out on a Smith Corona in the mid-90s If AI uses em dashes, it is using the tools of the enemy, because they are using MY tools, and I am the enemy

The em dash has always been the most enjoyable punctuation mark in the English language

So did Emily Dickinson. In fact I call them Em dashes in her honor.

Hahaha! Same.

It’s literally because people use em dashes; they’re part of the training data.

Ha. Yeah, if em dashes are AI then every lawyer I’ve ever worked with has been using AI for the past 25 years.

Didn't know until your post that em dashes are connected in any way with AI. I've been using them since junior high, and that was late 60s.

me too

The real debate is spaces or no spaces

Omg with all that’s going on right note that’s life & death & justice - this is what pale are talking about? (I use them all the time)

You use em dashes because anything smaller is a freaking hyphen. Where did these people learn their editing!?

AI doesn’t put a space before or after it’s em dashes but I certainly do.

What if ChatGPT has a time machine as well? Imagine if every oligarch had one. We could have time races.

I imagine there’s a lot of overlap between those people and the ones who think # is called the hashtag was invented by Twitter

So you're the one ChatGPT trained on? Thanks a lot, man.

Totally, and it's all so dumb. Step 1: Writers and creatives call AI a plagiarism machine that steals & devalues professional work 2: AI is trained on professional work 3: It mimics what has been deemed the highest-quality stuff in the training data 4: Em-dashes are AI for sure

+1

Drives me crazy. A lot of writers, me included, use em-dashes.

Are you secretly Dr Who?

i read that as people revealing that they, themselves, don't do a heck of a lot of reading

I think of em dashes as a hallmark of the golden age of twitter much more than as a sign of ChatGPT.

I started using em dashes more intentionally in 2022 when an editor pointed out that I was missing a lot of good opportunities for them. Then the LLM issue popped up and I refuse to go back. I'm not sacrificing language to an LLM as if it is the only one with the privilege of using them.

Weird that I learned how to use em dashes in 1972. Future Chris must’ve been my English teacher.

I've always loved em dashes. Worse than that I commonly substitute two dashes for an em dash. I need an em dash on my phone keyboard. I don't need the ™ symbol. Give me a way to easily write exponents too instead of using the ^ character.