I learned about the em dash in high school and adapted it to my writing style very quickly for analysis and opinion documents. It felt natural given the amount of tangents I can go off into, particularly when including analogies for the reader’s understanding.
I was surprised to find out in my career that it was rarely used by others. Subconsciously I pulled back on how often I used it — especially when it was once suggested that frequent use could imply neurodivergence. Important and lengthy documents which I’d written and published (internally) at work still display them. On occasion there have been comments asking if I’d somehow accessed early AI models to assist in writing these works because of their presence. I think I averaged two em dashes per letter page.
I find myself on the fence with proposals like these. They have good intentions but they do not solve an issue at its core. An LLM is going to reflect one of many writing styles. If today it’s frequent em dash usage, tomorrow it could be frequent parentheses. Swapping Unicode characters becomes a cat-and-mouse game with the cat always two steps behind. The real issue is that the social contract is broken because LLM output is attempted to be passed off as human work. Review and revise that social contract instead to adapt to the existence of the new tools.
Isn't this what parenthesizes are meant for? Together with footnotes, I've always used them like that, but I guess it could also be just a cultural difference. My teachers in Swedish school always told me to put thoughts like that into parenthesizes, but I also just (barely) finished high school, could be related too.
> I find myself on the fence with proposals like these. They have good intentions but they do not solve an issue at its core.
I don't understand what the issue even is here, and the RFC also doesn't clearly outline it. Is "created ambiguity for human writers who have historically relied upon the em dash as a stylistic device" the problem here?
Trying to solve it by adding just another character and slap the label "Human Attestation Mark (HAM)" on it will just make LLMs eventually use those instead... Not sure what the point is to be honest.
Parentheses add emphasis to a sentence or statement. Normally the use of it allows the sentence to be complete with or without it.
Em dashes may also add or increase emphasis but are normally treated as an aside. Think of it as a comment by the author to inject themselves, sometimes in ways which do not form a complete sentence.
For example: When you read this sentence (in your mind) it should feel complete and correct. Perhaps you read in your own voice — something I don’t normally do — or without one at all.
> I don't understand what the issue even is here, and the RFC also doesn't clearly outline it.
The issue is written there but may not make sense unless you know someone who stylistically writes with high-than-average em dash usage. I, for example, get inquiries and comments at work from employees who ask what LLM model I used for “generating these reports” because of the presence of em dashes. They do not believe me when I say not a single word was written by LLMs because, “there’s an em dash. Only LLMs use em dashes!” This is categorically untrue and erodes the authenticity of work from people because of the correlation.
Their aim is to implement a new Unicode character which programs like text editors could inject when a person types an em dash. It attributes to a human being behind the document, typing characters out individually. Actions like copy-pasting text in bulk wouldn’t replace em dashes since it can’t attribute a human as writing it out.
It is perfectly OK (it really is) to use parentheses -- and emdashes alike -- where they're useful; other punctuation like the semicolon, the comma, and even the Oxford comma are also OK.
There's not much that is disallowed in English. Most people have no reason to adhere to any particularly-rote style guide.
Parentheticals (including non-restrictive appositives) can be set off in English by either commas, em-dashes, or parentheses. There aren’t a lot of hard and fast rules for which is used where, though a common (partial) rule is for appositives without internal commas to be set off by commas and thise with internal commas to be set off with em-dashes. This obviously leaves open the handling of non-appositive parentheticals.
There are other uses of em-dashes, some of which softly overlap with other punctuation—I’m not aware of any common alternative to two em-dashes for ommission of partial words (useful in transcribing unclear sources, for instance.)
> I don't understand what the issue even is here, and the RFC also doesn't clearly outline it.
The RFC—fake, the maximum RFC number currently is 9945—is a joke.
I use em-dash (written as "--" because I don't have an emdash key on my keyboard) as punctuation that sits between a semicolon and a period.
Well that explains a lot. Interestingly enough, I've found that I naturally write like an LLM, or rather the LLMs write like I did. I wonder how many other patterns we attribute to LLMs are common in neurodivergent writing just as a result of so much of the training data being areas of the internet where I'd imagine neurodivergence is overrepresented vs. the general population.
It’s a very interesting thought experiment and if we had the data to support exploring it I’d love to see what we could find. I’d imagine that some subject-matter experts would probably be discovered as being neurodivergent to the surprise of nobody but themselves.
(They probably wouldn’t appreciate opening Pandora’s box!)
It's clearly a joke à la RFC 3514.
I probably should’ve checked ‘454545’ in the ascii table. Seeing how it translates to ‘---‘ could’ve hinted towards that, but the clever use probably would’ve been applauded instead without thinking it was a joke.
Ah well. Egg on my face I suppose.
Funny enough, my kid asked me to proofread their essay the other week, and I noted some awkward comma usage and inconsistent voice. We talked through options for breaking apart sentence clauses as well as punctuation that could do the heavy lifting—specifically semicolons and em-dashes. They thought the em-dash looked cool af and semicolons looked harsh. “I love em-dashes, they’re so cool!”, was fun to hear a middle schooler say.
Ofc their teacher said that their essay was “likely 85% AI assisted.” Fortunately, the change log showed continual revisions during school hours on a managed device (ChatGPT blocked). I emailed their teacher that I had proofed it, highlighted an awkward spot or two, and pointed my kid to grammar devices they could explore themselves and apply if they wished. No harm, no foul.
Fast forward, my kid and their friend were talking about it and the friend told them to do what they do: intentionally sprinkle in grammar / spelling mistakes. le sigh I suggested to them that LLMs can easily do that too and they’re better off just learning to write well as it’s em-dash today and something else tomorrow; that the worst thing would be to dumb down style/vocab/grammar for fear of appearing LLM generated.
In this sense, the idea that "em-dash = AI" has become something of a strawman. The mere presence of em-dashes isn't what indicates AI, it's the fact that LLMs use them so frequently, and use them for formal structure (where another punctuation mark would work better) rather than informal breaking up of related thoughts.
That's the problem with all the LLM writing tropes, really. When used correctly, they are all helpful writing tools to get your point to the reader. The em-dash, "it's not X, it's Y", "Not X, Not Y, Just Z", "It's worth noting" (I use that one a lot in my own writing), etc.
It's not that the patterns are bad (they aren't), they are just over used.
Isn't that supposed to be en-dash? I swear I remember em-dash being more restricted in use.
I was told the ellipses is the mark of a 4th grade poet and to never use it.
funny how things change!
I don’t think writing with AI makes a creation "worse." If anything, it makes it better, if you bring genuine idea and imagination to it first.
The stigma comes from people being lazy and letting the AI do the heavy lifting of thinking. That’s where the "social contract" breaks. But using AI as a multiplier for your own voice and ideas isn’t "subpar"—it’s efficient.
If we start playing "whack-a-mole" with punctuation to find AI, we’re missing the point. The question isn’t what tool was used, but how much of the human's "creation" is actually in there.
This is essentially my point. The AI emits an answer and people will, in turn, copy and paste the result as-is. It’s a repeat all over again of people simply copy-pasting something from Wikipedia and trying to pass it off as their own.
When you think folks have come up with every inventive way to pathologize a personality trait, they start gatekeeping punctuation. It’s the ultimate reach—turning a standard grammar tool into a "symptom" just to fuel the modern obsession with finding new ways to be a unique victim.
Suggesting that a horizontal line is a diagnostic "tell" for neurodivergence is peak internet brain-rot. It’s not a condition; it’s middle-school English. We’ve officially hit a level of performative absurdity where people are trying to claim clout through a keyboard stroke. It’s not a disability; it’s a stylistic choice.
AI stole the em-dash from my toolkit.
I have memorized a group of useful Alt-codes for engineering documents. They include symbols for diameter, delta, degrees, dot product, and trademark among others. If you're of a certain age, you will remember how useful Alt+255 was for folder naming.
At the cusp of the 21st centuries, I added the Windows Alt-code for the em-dash. Compared to parentheses it is less jarring. Commas are dainty things. I use the em-dash, and I am human.*
* I confess that I also use semicolons; I still claim to be human.
At work I also always tended to send slightly longer but structured answers. I found that it allowed to skip over the irrelevant sections and focus on what the changes are. Eg a list of changes with in the format -> bullet point -> change name -> change details. So people could easily focus on changes they cared about. Instead of a dense paragraph that people often just skip.
Hell I even found myself wanting to add a typo just to give a more human fell, or skip final “.” to make my text imperfect and more human. That’s getting silly
Many keyboard layouts for other languages use the right Alt (AltGr) key for less common symbols. Something like AltGr+(-) could work for the em dash.
Something as simple as an alt code makes me contemplate. As the tech progresses it makes me dislike AI and those that shove it down our throats more and more.
I feel like the sum of my interests and skills from simple, Photoshop edits or learning my most used alt codes, is a lot like how the cellphone replaced some of our ability to remember phone numbers.
The machine does the thing, so why do humans need to do the thing? Or even learn about the thing?
I'm sure there are better examples than the cellphone eliminating the phonebook in my head, but I'm just thinking what are the unseen damages to humans handing over work to machines?
:::: The phone remembers the number, but what if I don't have the phone?
As a previously more involved automation career oriented person, I've heard all the catch phrases of saving the worker, and kill the repetitive tasks. It doesn't look like that ever happens, unless it's something the business world doesn't understand completely, yet have the power and authority to shape. Disgusting.
I think a better example: Everyone thinks about "how should I word this email, what's the tone, who is the audience?" Should I check every detail and work my editing skill muscle or should I simply run an idea, rather than try to form it myself, through an LLM?
Maybe it will sound better if the grammar is perfect and I will have a more effective point rather than how the message was crafted.
No harm in more effective communication, but I do foresee the serious impact the moment people that are relying on the tools lose Internet connection.
We must use these muscles, even if to first formulate a terrible, errored, humanized version. Not to look down upon ourselves with discontent when the AI that corrects it, through their wealth of stolen source material, but to have something to fall back on when the power goes out.
I digress, these RFCs are a good proposal without any strength. Just look at the theft to train these models. The models will strive to become useful to those that rely on them and just adopt the new way of writing.
If it's serious, I don't know why humans have to change to add hidden bytes, and we assume AI won't naturally learn them, or if it does the AI companies will be expected to filter them out. Why only on dashes? If the plan requires AI companies to make changes to their output, why not just say only AI should add extra invisible characters, and why not before or after any punctuation?
def replace_em_dash(text: str) -> str:
"""
+-------------------+
| ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ) |
+-------------------+
"""
return text.replace("—", "\u10EAD\u10EAC")
>>> "—".replace("—", "\u10EAD\u10EAC")
'ცDცC'
I didn't expect ChatGPT to make such trivial mistake, although, I have no idea which model do they use on the free plan these days.
The correct code is, of course:
text.replace("—", "\U00010EAD\U00010EAC")
$ unicode u+10eac u+10ead
U+10EAC YEZIDI COMBINING MADDA MARK
UTF-8: f0 90 ba ac UTF-16BE: d803deac Decimal: 𐺬 Octal: \0207254
𐺬
Category: Mn (Mark, Non-Spacing); East Asian width: N (neutral)
Unicode block: 10E80..10EBF; Yezidi
Bidi: NSM (Non-Spacing Mark)
Combining: 230 (Above)
Age: Newly assigned in Unicode 13.0.0 (March, 2020)
U+10EAD YEZIDI HYPHENATION MARK
UTF-8: f0 90 ba ad UTF-16BE: d803dead Decimal: 𐺭 Octal: \0207255
𐺭
Category: Pd (Punctuation, Dash); East Asian width: N (neutral)
Unicode block: 10E80..10EBF; Yezidi
Bidi: R (Right-to-Left)
Age: Newly assigned in Unicode 13.0.0 (March, 2020)Whenever I generate a large amount of code, there is a ~20% chance that my editor will pop a warning "Some unicode characters in this file could not be saved in the current codepage".
I suggest taking a look at the raw outputs of a major AI provider in a hex editor. That (zero-width) whitespace could be hiding a lot of information.
No it isn't! The PDF renderer has stripped them out.
Few people were doing replies in Word and then copying them in.
The punctuation ecosystem LOL
I'm thinking that we can't reliably sus out what's human and what's AI from here on out, and I don't think there's any good way to enforce something like a human emdash. The way we're going you won't be able to verify unless users scan their iris or a 3 letter agency vouches for them first.
Talking to someone in real life.
Of course that's taking the piss, but realistically that is sort of the answer: Having access to a side-channel through which you can identify that a person is in fact a person, coupled with the trust that they won't try to sleight you by making you waste your attention. Honestly with how much LLM drivel is being generated and the sort-of renaissance of the personal website, blog, and RSS, I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of consensus-trust-based network for human authors were established.
What stops any generated text from using this codepoint versus the existing em dash codepoint?
I find the punctuation annoying, mostly because the dashes are routinely used without a space on each side. Thus making the text look hyphenated.
The comma serves the same purpose and is superior in every way.
The instructions for how to decide whether to enter these additional unicode codepoints are also highly suspect.
Performative, but not helpful.
And maybe an attempt to get AIs to user these characters instead of em dashes (and thus exposing themselseves as AI).
which never should have been a thing, because it was obviously wrong
yes AIs is more likely to use em-dash, but that is just one, by itself very insufficient, indicator.
it's like hip size. In average over the populations they are wider for woman. But the effect is too small to classify the gender of a hip bone by it's size. (Like for a specific age range and ethnicity, the difference in median is like 1" or so, while there is a >10" difference between 5%-percentile and 95%-percentile. Varying by gender in difference and exact distribution.) Well I guess em-dash are more an indication for AI then hip size for gender... lol
I find parenthesis often awkward or too heavy, so may use the m-dash to replace those. Especially if what might have been a parenthetical is going to terminate a sentence, an m-dash is much cleaner, as it doesn't need a closing mark, and a terminating paren right before a period looks awful. For long potential-parentheticals that do terminate before the end of the sentence, the m-dash takes up more visual space and marks the beginning and end more-visibly, making for easier scanning. One ought probably re-write to avoid parenthetical statements most of the time in the first place, when there's time, but sometimes they're desirable for stylistic reasons, or just because one lacks the time to improve a draft.
I also use it as a "classier" version of the ellipsis. It doesn't replace every use, but it replaces very-casual, colloquial use of that mark as a kind of harder-comma. Looks much better, I think, and serves the same purpose.
As for the semicolon, I'd never shy away from the semicolon when I can get away with it, but use them rarely nonetheless. I don't think I ever replace them with the m-dash, though. As inline list separators they're great and an m-dash would be an awful replacement, while as soft-periods, they're fine, though most of the time I just use a full period—but not an m-dash, not if a semicolon could have worked.
I do think they're more at-home in, say, fiction than technical writing, but I like having them in my toolbox in any case.
Of course, if we collectively shifted to the spaced en dash then LLMs would eventually follow; it's not clear to me that any simple and deliberate sign of humanity could remain exclusive given the incentives for machines to replicate it.