Recently I was accused of using AI to produce something because of my use of em-dash. I was able to show my use of the character going back years in my university work, long before recent AI.
Absolutely absurd of them to accuse you of using AI just because you used punctuation above a middle school level.
You're generalizing inappropriately across cultural boundaries. Is the author of the OP article an abnormal human? Does "normal" mean "of average writing level"—is it now socially acceptable to ostracize and bully people who write well?
Because, when you're accusing people of being bots (like the HN parent related), that's a seriously unpleasant form of bullying. It's dehumanizing, quite literally. (When you write with sincerity, you pour your own humanity into your words; what does it mean to deny that?)
>it's more complicated to insert them
Word automatically replaces the hyphen with it when between words surround by space — because it's the correct punctuation. I sincerely hope you don't believe it's too complicated when the task is done for you by Word — the most popular word processor. Additionally — just to test it out — long pressing hyphen yields the character on my phone. This has allowed me to effortlessly pepper this reply with slightly extended — and a touch controversial — horizontal lines.
Just because your writing style doesn't use em dashes — a rule taught to literal school children — doesn't mean it's not "normal."
Finally, I am sorry to report that my use of the em-dash has not allowed me to transcend humanity and become a cyborg — though I will return with a follow up post if I suddenly sprout a Serial port.
I’m finding an impulse while writing these days to censor writing styles which are much more efficient at conveying complex thoughts in favor of styles which are more “human” but fail to convey nuance.
It’s debilitating to anything beyond discussion of sound-bite sized thoughtlets.
I fear that this will be a race to the bottom for human discourse and intellect.
More generally I guess the more punctuation mistakes you make, the lower the chances your text is flagged as written by AI, so there's now an optimal amount of mistakes that maximizes the perceived value of your work.