this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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My guy, the reason AI uses so many em dashes is because it was trained on proper writing that properly uses appropriate punctuation. Those of us who know how to write have been using em dashes, semicolons, parenthetical statements and more for decades longer than AI has been around. You could very well be reading the work of a journalist who actually knows how to write rather than stringing together Twitter posts into an article.
We know, this is not an attack on em dashes.
It’s still ai slop.
I use em dashes all the time myself, I also make this critique and people always respond with a defence of em dashes.
Its the use patterns on how and when they are used combined with other patterns that makes it evident that it is AI. Its just the most easily recognisable tell. When you see over use of em dashes in a an article online, you check for those other tells.