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You don't need to be an AI to use em-dashes. I actually use them quite a lot (even outside of Word) and AFAIK I am not an AI. I just care about text layout and proper use of characters. — is Alt-0151 on Windows (ok you need a keyboard with numeric pad).

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Well, you may need to worry about them now. It's a well-known issue with the mainstream LLMs. Every few days, you see a new post on reddit from people asking how to get rid of em dashes from ChatGPT, etc.

Even when they are not a telltale-sign, folks are afraid of using them now because of AI. I'm not saying em dashes are bad. Our books are littered with them, and that's why LLMs spit them out consistently.

https://medium.com/@brentcsutoras/the-em-dash-dilemma-how-a-...

The funny thing is, I wasn't even thinking about the em dashes when I made the initial comment. I had been concentrating on the usage of English in general in the article, which to me is a far more obvious sign of AI generation than the usage of em dashes is.

yup, "em dashes" was just easier for me to type to give an example/heuristic. Everything else would require a tad more effort to explain.

I was scratching my head pretty much the whole time during the first read.

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