I used to really love the em dash. Now that ChatGPT also loves it, I’m using it a little less often. The bar is higher for when I feel like it really belongs.

@manton I’ve literally been told at work to remove EVERY em dash from a recent piece of writing (not written with ChatGPT) because of it. Also, “the bar is high” is a nice (unintended?) pun.

@manton I know exactly what you mean. Same.

@manton I have the same issue! I always wonder if people will think I generated it with AI. 😊

@ChrisJWilson Ha! Unintended.

@manton I’ve been using them more lately lol ran one of my recent posts through an ai checker extension the other day and it said there was a 60% chance it was written by ai 😐

@grubz Oh no. I really don’t want my writing flagged like that. I probably won’t ever use a checker on it. 🙂

@manton good idea. I’ve been second guessing myself ever since! I feel like I’m using a weirder combination of punctuation than ever lately 😆

@manton I had been feeling I should probably use the em dash a bit less, even before I heard about it being a supposed flag for AI. I used to prefer round brackets in circumstances where em dashes might have been appropriate — maybe I’ll go back to that.

@artkavanagh Love that you have an em dash in your reply. 🙂 I hope that eventually we can go back to using whatever punctuation we want without worrying too much about being mistaken for robots.

@manton I’ve put in my project instructions within CGPT that anything within that folder doesn’t use them—and they still do! Semicolons and colons, too.

@bryan That is funny that ChatGPT ignores those instructions. It can’t help itself! Maybe when training GPT-5 they will think about this, not that it’s too serious of an issue.

@manton Standard disclaimer for post or site, then write as one pleases: this piece/site written without the use if LLM/AI, etc. same for images used on a site. I’m instantly no longer interested in a website/feed when it is leaning on AI images. Fast food is bad for you…

@manton Emily Dickinson has a very, very large wrench to throw in this conversation…🤓. I’m certain she alone could break Al’s “grasp” of the dash.

>I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

More dashes, I say.

@tinyroofnail Maybe that’s the answer. We could go all-in on dashes and use them even more than AI. 🙂

@JohnBrady That’s copy and pasted from a picture I took of it in a book of her poetry. Not sure what the original would have been. I think I remember reading somewhere that she used various styles of dashes — adding to the size of her wrench. Maybe that’s the answer: resume handwriting, use various dashes to your hearts content, and hopefully we can all watch AI try to categorize it till it self-destructs

@tinyroofnail Here at the Analog Office, we’re all over stuff like writing things by hand. To the larger point, I like em dashes. I’ve used them for many more years than AI has. In fact, it probably swiped them from my blogs. Why should I avoid what my imitator is imitating? When one sets the fashion, one must expect copycats. 😸 😸 😸 @manton @johnbrady

@annahavron @tinyroofnail @JohnBrady I’m probably just overthinking my own writing now. I agree, we were writing this way before AI existed! 🙂

@manton The underscore or or ellipses if people think the bar is to high for em dash

@JohnBrady You can see by the shorter dash that the writer was particularly agitated and impatient, revealing an unwillingness to learn from the subject matter at hand. Whereas this longer dash, and especially along with the spaces on either side of the dash, indicates a higher degree of focus and a determination to really drive the point home.

[…]

In conclusion, humankind has evolved alongside the dash toward the peak of their intellectual, emotional, and artistic powers. Our linguistic analysis finds credible evidence that modern society’s move away from the spaced em dash is indicative of a civilizational regression, even perhaps a human de-evolution. This warrants further study and a larger analysis than the space of this paper allows.

@annahavron Ha! Quite right. You’re setting the standard as far as I’m concerned.

@manton It’s always irked me most that neither typewriters nor modern computer keyboards had dedicated keys for the em dash. People would know better how and when to use it if it were easier to effectuate in their daily writing.

@chrisaldrich I had never thought about this with a typewriter before. But yeah, I memorized the shortcut for em dash years ago, maybe more common than any other special character.

@manton I like how mnemonic Vim’s shortcut is. After hitting the “special character” prefix, it’s just m then -

@manton I am really happy that there has been an eleven-day (and counting) discussion of em dashes on MB this month. It’s nice that you can put your foot in something around here and have it blow up in an entirely good-natured way.