This sounds like something an AI would write

it'd be a funny bit if op used ai to write this

as a frequent user of the em dash I find this whole AI tell thing distressing

also conspicuously hidden hands in an image doesn't mean it's ai generated
hands are hard to draw ;_;

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

Finally ⸻ the 3-em dash will have its moment

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The woke left want to indoctrinate you with Alt(2014) em dashes—like these—but real patriots use the STRAIGHTNESS symbol⏤like that.

Em persecution has to end

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

Hell, I’m an em dash enjoyer.

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

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 say in the middle of your statement that billionaires should be shot and that will clear up provenance questions immediately!

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)

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.