I’ve used em dashes (–) in writing for years. What makes them indicative of AI-generated writing?
For the people who are inevitably going to come in with anecdotes about “Hey i use em dash and I’m not an AI!” or “It’s actually easy to put this in your post if you know the alt-code or put double hyphens in” Yeah, that’s great, but it doesn’t explain how the usage of this punctuation spikes so massively over a short period of time. Changes in punctuation by actual humans are things you would expect to take decades as a result of changes in education and the style guides people encounter in their work and education.
The AI em dash usage is interesting to me because even if I ask it (GPT 4-4.5) explicitly to not use em dashes, it still will. With multiple prompts asking it not to or to remove them, it still uses them.
I use AI quite a bit for non-creative writing and I find myself having to manually go in and remove the em dashes.
This chart is meaningless without at least 1-2 years prior. Without knowing how the historical norms look, this “spike” could be literally anything — a noisy blip, part of a long-term upward trend, the ‘up’ part of a sinusoidal cycle, etc etc.
If you want to draw the conclusion that AI usage is increasing among these subs, you will need to show that the usage is fairly level and low before the prevalence of AI, then a sharp or gradual spike afterwards. If you want to show it is specifically these subs, you will need to show data from other subs to compare to. If you want to show it is specifically em dash, you should also include data for other punctuation marks to be extra complete.
That said, thank you for using “% of total posts using em dash” in your y-axis, and not the usual click-baity “% increase in number of posts using em dash — check it out, em dash usage increase 400.00%!1!!!” with crazy percentage increases over very small starting numbers (among other problems).
How many days in a row do you plan to post this?
wasnt this just posted yesterday
*The Mac Is Not A Typewriter* taught us Command-Option-Hyphen in 1991, no alt-code required.
Also, no city-named fonts on laser printers.
Now do posts that use…
U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK ‘
U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK ’
U+201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK “
U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK ”
Instead of…
U+0022 QUOTATION MARK ”
U+0027 APOSTROPHE ‘
Wtf is this comic sans monstrosity
I overused the em-dash before it was cool!
What is this xkcd ass looking graph
I showed this to my wife, who is an avid AI user (unlike me, I hate it with a passion) and she said “yeah I noticed that chatGPT produces that, it looks silly, I always remove it”. So you won’t get her this way 🙂
I am quite surprised though, em-dash is a very old-fashioned thing; even back when I was working for a printed magazine, we “compromised” to use en-dashes instead, because it simply looks better.
Okay I’ll bite, what’s em dash?
The data doesn’t go back far enough.
God damnit. I hadn’t really been aware of the em dash actually being used by anyone, now I’m going to have to be careful about whether anyone named Le-a I see is supposed to pronounced “Ledasha” or “Leemdasha”… =(
As of late, as an alternative to normal punctuation I’ve been starting a new line whenever I start a new “block” of information.
I just find it much more pleasant to read.
![[OC] Em Dash Usage is Surging in Tech & Startup Subreddits](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/6w3wbfvfrzye1-1920x1024.png)
16 comments
I’ve used em dashes (–) in writing for years. What makes them indicative of AI-generated writing?
For the people who are inevitably going to come in with anecdotes about “Hey i use em dash and I’m not an AI!” or “It’s actually easy to put this in your post if you know the alt-code or put double hyphens in” Yeah, that’s great, but it doesn’t explain how the usage of this punctuation spikes so massively over a short period of time. Changes in punctuation by actual humans are things you would expect to take decades as a result of changes in education and the style guides people encounter in their work and education.
The AI em dash usage is interesting to me because even if I ask it (GPT 4-4.5) explicitly to not use em dashes, it still will. With multiple prompts asking it not to or to remove them, it still uses them.
I use AI quite a bit for non-creative writing and I find myself having to manually go in and remove the em dashes.
This chart is meaningless without at least 1-2 years prior. Without knowing how the historical norms look, this “spike” could be literally anything — a noisy blip, part of a long-term upward trend, the ‘up’ part of a sinusoidal cycle, etc etc.
If you want to draw the conclusion that AI usage is increasing among these subs, you will need to show that the usage is fairly level and low before the prevalence of AI, then a sharp or gradual spike afterwards. If you want to show it is specifically these subs, you will need to show data from other subs to compare to. If you want to show it is specifically em dash, you should also include data for other punctuation marks to be extra complete.
That said, thank you for using “% of total posts using em dash” in your y-axis, and not the usual click-baity “% increase in number of posts using em dash — check it out, em dash usage increase 400.00%!1!!!” with crazy percentage increases over very small starting numbers (among other problems).
How many days in a row do you plan to post this?
wasnt this just posted yesterday
*The Mac Is Not A Typewriter* taught us Command-Option-Hyphen in 1991, no alt-code required.
Also, no city-named fonts on laser printers.
Now do posts that use…
U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK ‘
U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK ’
U+201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK “
U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK ”
Instead of…
U+0022 QUOTATION MARK ”
U+0027 APOSTROPHE ‘
Wtf is this comic sans monstrosity
I overused the em-dash before it was cool!
What is this xkcd ass looking graph
I showed this to my wife, who is an avid AI user (unlike me, I hate it with a passion) and she said “yeah I noticed that chatGPT produces that, it looks silly, I always remove it”. So you won’t get her this way 🙂
I am quite surprised though, em-dash is a very old-fashioned thing; even back when I was working for a printed magazine, we “compromised” to use en-dashes instead, because it simply looks better.
Okay I’ll bite, what’s em dash?
The data doesn’t go back far enough.
God damnit. I hadn’t really been aware of the em dash actually being used by anyone, now I’m going to have to be careful about whether anyone named Le-a I see is supposed to pronounced “Ledasha” or “Leemdasha”… =(
As of late, as an alternative to normal punctuation I’ve been starting a new line whenever I start a new “block” of information.
I just find it much more pleasant to read.
Comments are closed.