Not Every Em Dash Comes from ChatGPT
I've been using em dashes — the '—' symbol — for over a decade. I use them to emphasize ideas, break up sentences, or as bullet points. You'll spot em dashes in my blog posts and other writings. I just like using them — even when it's not really needed, like in this sentence. Setting up a shortcut to type em dash is one of the first things I do when switching to a new device.
But now, this habit causes a new problem — for me and anyone else who uses em dashes a lot.
People now see em dashes as a sign of AI-generated text.
It's understandable. Most people don't use em dashes or know how to type one. But tools like ChatGPT fill the responses with em dashes (see a discussion). So when people see a bunch of em dashes in emails or posts, they think it's AI-generated.
Here are a few things that make me suspect a text is from AI:
- Someone who never used em dashes before suddenly uses them everywhere.
- Mixing curly and straight quotes or apostrophes (
’vs',“vs") in the same text. AI often uses curly quotes, while most people type straight ones. Some editors like Word auto-convert straight quotes to curly — but that's consistent. - Too many emojis in the text.
But wait, is using AI-generated text a problem?
Not in my opinion. AI is just another tool to help improve our life. When writing, giving AI some context (like "help me write an email to a potential customer, but don't sound desperate" or "edit my post for LinkedIn, keeping a formal tone") can really improve the content.
The problem is when people just generate AI content, copy-paste it, and publish it as if they wrote it. The internet is full of this kind of stuff now, and it's getting harder to tell if someone actually wrote something or just faked it — which makes things tough for people who write original content.
So now, people like me have to say it louder: "not every em dash comes from ChatGPT"