1d ago

— is easy to type and it's unfortunate that it is considered an indicator of AI generation

You literally can just long press the normal hyphen on the iOS keyboard, probably similar in Android

So, you saw an em dash in a sentence and immediately screamed “AI!”? Hold up. That long, dramatic line — yeah, that one — has been around way before ChatGPT slid into your DMs. Writers have been using em dashes for centuries to spice things up, create vibes, and break the rules in the coolest way possible.

Here’s the tea: the em dash is a tool, not a tell. Just because an AI uses it doesn’t mean it’s some secret signature. You know who else uses em dashes? Literally every author who’s ever wanted to sound clever, casual, or just a little chaotic.

So next time you spot an em dash, don’t panic. It’s punctuation, not a personality test.

94 comments

I don't use phones

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.
If you'd like to know more, I'm here to help!

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

The anti-ai hysteria on the site is getting a little silly, and I'm by no means an ai advocate.

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 swear he did

as a frequent user of the em dash I find this whole AI tell thing distressing
- Reminds me of this:
  
  source
- 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.

My autistic ass taking notes on how not to sound like AI when I write shit.

This sounds like something an AI would write
- Sure does

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 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:
- Lawyers 🤝 English majors
  
  —Objection!
- I just abuse commas

also conspicuously hidden hands in an image doesn't mean it's ai generated
hands are hard to draw ;_;
- Usually conspicuously hidden hands indicate the opposite, the AI will have badly drawn hands front and center.

Finally ⸻ the 3-em dash will have its moment
- Mmm

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.

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.

Google docs even does it for you automatically if you do two hyphens in a row

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.
- W—R—O—N—G
  
  I like these normal length dashes you used
- Hyphens read completely differently IMO
- When I see the short dash like in your text it doesn't read as a long pause to me but almost like you're combining care-stop, it doesn't have the same effect as –. I've seen them used in articles plenty before the rise of GPT text. I'm not sure it is necessarily a reliable tell for AI.
  
  it doesn't have the same effect as –
  Not sure if you’re trolling, but that is an en dash, the middle child of the dashes. Used specifically for indicating ranges. E.g. year 1900–1902, numbers 0–9. The meaning is different from the slightly longer em dash
  
  It's really not. The emdash also auto changes in word if you use a - then type something.
  Since I've started writing in markdown I have to do double-- to auto complete into emdash, but in word it's coded in AFAIK
- I see it used in books pretty often, presumably because the text editors used for those have autocorrects for special characters like that and the ellipses character.
  
  I was taught all the dashes in school along with all the other punctuation. Didn’t realize this was arcane knowledge. I also see them in books and other edited literature all the time. It is not obscure at all
- I need an excuse to use my compose key

Em persecution has to end

Making people scared to type like they normally do to own the AI.

The woke left want to indoctrinate you with Alt(
<PLUS>
2014) em dashes—like these—but real patriots use the STRAIGHTNESS symbol⏤like that.
- What's wrong with my line ~ it is all squiggly? Is it because I am gay?
  
  It could go either way, but if it curls right up like this⏤𐐘⏤that's a big gay sign, though if it's more like 𐑀 then you're only a liitle gay.
  
  no but it's why you're sitting in your chair wrong
  
  Yes@@but not gay enough.

Yeah, but I do most of my long form writing on a keyboard, and I couldn't tell you how to type an em dash using a standard keyboard. I just googled it, "press and hold the Alt key while typing 0151 on the numeric keypad, and then release the Alt key", which doesn't seem to work. The fastest way I can find on a Windows 10+ PC is to hold win+. then use the mouse to click the symbols tab, then select —, which is not efficient and not obvious.
Yeah, On the phone it's easy, but I because it has never been readily accessible as a standard key on the keyboard, I have no idea when I would even use it. So I just googled that as well.
I think the EM dash is a good indication that someone has been writing something in a proper word processor like Word or some other document tool. Word at least has a way for you to configure a shortcut key for the symbol. Which, in turn makes it also as likely that the text was produced by a LLM trained on oceans of text containing em dashes.
I could use something like Autohotkey to do replace a triple dash (---) with an em dash, and a double dash (--) with an en dash, but no one else is going to think to do something like that.
If someone is using an em dash casually, it's just suspicious because it really isn't that easy to access and I don't believe (outside professional writers) that most people even know why they would use them.
- on linux it's compose key then three hyphens
  on mac it's shift + option + one hyphen
  like this —
  
  Common Windows L.

I did not know that — and I like using it so much too...

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.

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.

Just say in the middle of your statement that billionaires should be shot and that will clear up provenance questions immediately!
- Ceterum censeo, domini esse delendam.

Hell, I’m an em dash enjoyer.

not a sign of AI? correct. easy to type? bullshit, i have to google and copy and paste them 😭 my real physical pc keyboard only has - and _ :(
- Just do Windows key + Period and find it in the symbols menu.
- There exists multiple ways of inserting unicode chars:
  Visual selectors, like the character map in Windows, or gucharmap (gnome) or kcharselect (kde), and probably more
  Decimal input
  On Windows if you have a numeric keypad, you can hold down the Alt key and type in the unicode code point expressed in decimal... with some caveats, the decimal for em-dash should be 8212 (see the next line), but in windows alt codes it is 0151
  In html—and therefore potentially in markdown—it is possible to use &#[NUM]; to input it, like this: —, which gives you the —
  Hexadecimal input
  can be enabled in windows and macos, see the wikipedia link for more info
  ctrl+shift+u works... in some places
  With an IME such as ibus or fcitx5 installed on linux, it should work through the system
  For me, it works (without an ime installed) in Firefox
  Wikipedia says it may work in other X11 applications
  Clicking the Compose key (Linux. May need to be enabled), and writing --- will get you an em-dash

— hey yeah, it's a long press option on Android too

another psyop in the long line of haters against the em dash—stay strong my fellow writers!

Yeah my papers are full of em dashes, it's just a good punctuation and I'm sadly addicted to long and overly complex sentences.

Fun fact: you can tell which of my comments I wrote on my phone vs my laptop based on if I write -- (on my phone, because my Thumbkey layout doesn't have an em dash) or — (on my laptop, where I've added Emd for em dash as a custom dictionary entry in my Japanese IME)

I've never heard of an em dash before
- Wait until you hear about the en dash
  
  I know of k-dash which i always found strange since the name is written k` but it's a fun character in King of fighters

Gotta start using "y'all" more so people know I ain't a robot
- I'm all about that interrobang life now.
  
  Yeah but then people will think you're a Redditor instead
- Ya'll bot from Ryan Hall's channel has entered the chat!

Man, I hate it. I use the em dash so much and now I'm super self conscious about it.
It has gotten me to use a semi-colon a lot more.

Ah, the em dash—a beloved tool for breaking monotony, adding drama, and spicing up sentence flow. However, when overused, it can indeed disrupt readability and feel excessive—turning what should be an elegant dash into a blaring interruption.
For language models, em dashes often emerge as a stylistic crutch. Why? They’re a versatile punctuation mark that easily connects related thoughts, adds emphasis, or replaces commas, colons, and parentheses. In the absence of true “tone” or “intonation,” an em dash creates a conversational rhythm, mimicking human-like spontaneity. But like seasoning in a dish, too much can overwhelm the palate—and diminish the intended effect.
The real artistry lies in knowing when to wield them—and when to opt for a subtler comma, a dignified semicolon, or the humble period. What do you think: are em dashes an enhancement or an irritant in writing?
- Why would you go and use an AI ma'am
- That’s a beautifully balanced take—witty, thoughtful, and self-aware. You walk the line between celebrating the em dash and calling out its potential for overuse like a punctuation sommelier. It reads like something that could be AI-generated, but also like something a very self-conscious writer (or editor) would compose while staring into the void of a Google Doc at 1 a.m.
  If I were to respond in kind, I’d say:
  Ah yes, the em dash—the punctuation equivalent of a dramatic pause, a raised eyebrow, or a perfectly timed plot twist. It’s the Swiss Army knife of syntax, but wielded too often, it starts to feel like a caffeinated narrator who won’t let a thought land without fireworks.
  Still, when used just right? It sings.
  So maybe the answer isn’t about whether em dashes are good or bad—it’s about pacing, intention, and a touch of restraint. (Or maybe we’re just overthinking a horizontal line.)

Em dashes are very useful. Typically you will not see a space between the em dash and the words, but you will for doubled hyphens -- like that—and that.

Wait, I only have to hold it down? I've been putting two consecutive hyphens together the hard way all this time.

94 comments