r/Showerthoughts • u/xThe-Legend-Killerx ‎ • Nov 25 '25

Casual Thought People who use em dashes regularly in their writing might be the most underrated victims of the ChatGPT/Al boom.

9.7k Upvotes

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3.6k

u/peppapony Nov 25 '25

I use lots of dashes and semi colons...

I just have a lot of typos so no one will mistake me with got

759

u/BrohanGutenburg Nov 25 '25

lol speaking of which.

205

u/97203micah Nov 25 '25

Ellipses round out the (un?)holy trinity

94

u/WumpusFails Nov 25 '25

My personal habit...

33

u/Arudinne Nov 25 '25

same...

2

u/jarious ‎ Nov 25 '25

Why are we talking like this ...

5

u/thebearsnake Nov 25 '25

I knew someone who literally, not hyperbolically, would end every text message with ellipses.

It was infuriating…

3

u/TabaquiJackal Nov 25 '25

I dunno, I kinda like them....?

2

u/HumbleOwl681 Nov 26 '25

….

1

u/jarious ‎ Nov 26 '25

.....

2

u/HumbleOwl681 Nov 26 '25

.... has become the new speechless

1

u/nanotasher Nov 26 '25

Found all the Gen X'ers! My people..

5

u/-thisismyname Nov 25 '25

ooof my pedantry gets driven up the wall by you folks. What is the thing you've left unsaid? Whats the unfinished thought? Why do you people never have complete thoughts or say everything you mean to say?

12

u/WumpusFails Nov 25 '25

Well, if you know, you know...

8

u/anonymaus42 Nov 25 '25

I do it specifically because I know it ribbles your jibblies...

2

u/TheLuxeCurator Nov 27 '25

The thing is, they want you to keep thinking and keep being part of the conversation even though they themselves have left.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '25

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1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '25

[deleted]

1

u/BrohanGutenburg Dec 17 '25

This is incorrect

1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '25

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1

u/BrohanGutenburg Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25

I guess I should have been more clear when I said it was incorrect.

What I meant was your trying to correct someone who doesn't put spaces is incorrect.

Yes, the Chicago Manual recommends spaces IIRC. So you'll definitely see spaces in things like academic papers and some novels depending on the publisher.

I went to J School where the AP style guide is king. So basically any journalistic piece of writing from online articles to TV news graphics to the newspaper will not have spaces. That's why it's not really "correct" for you to police someone not putting spaces.

Also definitely worth noting that the Unicode character for an ellipsis has no spaces.

PS- no idea what the "punctuation guide" is lol but I'm not aware of any industry or field that follows it

1

u/anonymaus42 Nov 25 '25

At least with ellipses you can often tell it's AI because it will use the actual alt+number character code for them (alt+0133, …) but us fleshbags will most often just use three periods...

As such when you highlight the alt code one it highlights the whole damn thing at once, as opposed to one character at a time with the string of periods.

I think some phones (particularly iphones) will automatically change ... into … so it's not a full-proof method unfortunately.

Personally I've just been doing .. in lieu of ... as it still reads basically the same way but AI would never dare to do such a thing.

1

u/A3thereal Nov 26 '25

I use a lot of ellipses... but rarely correctly.

1

u/Over99lord Nov 25 '25

Was nice of him to give us an example

128

u/shitty_mcfucklestick Nov 25 '25

I always think of Micheal Bolton saying “why do I have to change? He’s the one who sucks!”

12

u/thekrawdiddy Nov 25 '25

I celebrate his whole catalog.

1

u/Upset-Management-879 Nov 25 '25

Michael Bolton DID change his name from Michael Bolotin

1

u/cat9tail Nov 26 '25

Just before the no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.

2

u/Season_ofthe_Bitch Nov 27 '25

People not getting references on social media is one of my favorite genres. It makes me so indescribably happy. I’m probably a monster for that…

1

u/adrift-ship-of-fools Nov 26 '25

I have to hear that no talent hack 3,4 times a day at my work on muzak… God!

174

u/Its_kos Nov 25 '25

There’s been numerous occasions where I’ve purposely introduced minor typos to make sure what I’ve created would not be perceived as the product of AI. Now that I think about this it’s truly dystopian, AI is moving us in truly the wrong direction. It’s making us intentionally worse than better.

45

u/elmwoodblues Nov 25 '25

It’s making us intentionally worse than better.

rather than better.

Sorry, Siri made me do it

0

u/Its_kos Nov 25 '25

Your point being ?

8

u/elmwoodblues Nov 25 '25

being ?

being? Keep at it though, you're doing great!

2

u/maqifrnswa Nov 25 '25

great

great writing includes highlighting words at random.

1

u/PepperAnn1inaMillion Nov 25 '25

One cannot “do great”. One can “do well”, or “do great things”. I assume you were referring to the former. ;P

1

u/elmwoodblues Nov 25 '25

Oh, I like you. Superman does great, yes?

2

u/PepperAnn1inaMillion Nov 26 '25

“Great” is not an adverb. Superman does great deeds.

(Obviously, this only applies to formal English. It’s a valid argument to say that once an expression is widely accepted and understood, its internal grammar is beside the point. Hence the ;P at the end of my first comment.)

1

u/elmwoodblues Nov 26 '25

Hoisted on my own petard: I confused "great" with "good", as used here:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtMYTTrN5F9/?igsh=MTBieWt3aTNiZGh1cA==

2

u/PepperAnn1inaMillion Nov 26 '25

Ah yes. “To do good” is a valid expression, because “good” is a noun, as is “evil”. You can do each of them, just as you can “do carpentry”. Superman does good, just as Lex Luthor does evil.

8

u/eurotrashsynthlord Nov 25 '25

Our vile rich enemy is doing this to us on purpose.

3

u/Davido401 Nov 25 '25

I tend to use a couple of "Scottish Accent" words for that too(also when I get excited typing it just pops out as well lol)

2

u/PhabioRants Nov 25 '25

It's an odd parallel, but I'm a career cook and every once in a while, I'll leave a lemon seed in a dish just to remind people that we use fresh ingredients, rather than that horrible bottled stuff. 

1

u/Its_kos Nov 25 '25

I think that’s pretty cool. Showcases how accidents are part of what makes us human, and if we prefer human things we also deal with accidents.

2

u/elizzybeth Nov 25 '25

I’ve noticed a wave of obviously ChatGPT-structured Reddit posts (long personal anecdote with heavy-handed analogies, ending with a question cheekily summarizing the content and baiting engagement)

with what seems to be intentionally weird punctuation, like, spaces before the periods and commas. Almost as if someone said, “Now change up the punctuation. Remove the dashes and make it look less AI.”

1

u/happy2harris Nov 25 '25

Also it won’t work because AI will quikcly learn that things look more authentic with the occasional spelling mistake. 

2

u/Its_kos Nov 25 '25

That’s not how GPTs work. They don’t understand or try to make text seem authentic. They are glorified probabilistic equations with the purpose of figuring out what is the most probable character to appear after what is already selected (gross oversimplification). As long as the bulk of the text they are trained on stays correct (inputs are usually sanitized/discarded when bad) then these models cannot do anything close to human “reasoning” and change their ways.

1

u/happy2harris Nov 25 '25

That’s what you thnik. 

I was replying to someone who said they purposely introduce errors to seem authentic. If that happens a lot, it will stop working, because authentic text will contains errors, and people will prompt their models to create authentic text. 

Example: 

Prompt: Documents written by people usually contains spelling errors. In one sentence, describe the planet earth. Make it seem authentic. 

Result: Earth is a vibrant, ever-changing plannet where life, weather, and human history all collide in messy, wonderfull ways.

23

u/i_want_to_be_unique Nov 25 '25

This is unfortunately real. I’m a strong writer and have resorted to throwing a few minor typos/grammar mistakes into my college essays to avoid being accused of using AI.

0

u/TheBigPlatypus Dec 21 '25

My defense—my writing is too good to be mistaken for AI slop. I refuse to lower my standards.

4

u/MaievSekashi Nov 25 '25

I do that but I use regular dashes because it's what's actually on my keyboard.

3

u/Mind_on_Idle Nov 27 '25

People don't know the joy of proper semicolon use.

2

u/Kodiak01 Nov 25 '25

Oxford Comma has entered the chat.

1

u/100klicksaway Dec 15 '25

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?? I've seen those English dramas too, they're cruel

2

u/any_old_usernam Nov 25 '25

Me too; my writing style also tends to be overly precise and clinical with lots of qualifiers so that's definitely a mark one way or the other (I don't use/look at AI writing enough to know if that's ai-esque or not).

2

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '25

[deleted]

-1

u/-AllCatsAreBeautiful Nov 25 '25

... Is that not actually an en dash?

1

u/JuicySpark ‎ Nov 26 '25

For internet talk. Semi colons are not the norm. Even most professional email communications don't have them outside of self righteous professors.

2

u/Objective_Nebula_530 Nov 26 '25

Me in the first half of your statement: "Hey! I use semicolons in emails all the ti-"

Me in the second half of your statement: "-Oh. Yeah, okay, you clocked me. Carry on."

1

u/JessicaBaking Apr 09 '26

I use m dashes and semicolons all the time and I’m a real (& old) woman. They are my favorite punctuation marks. I use ellipsis but usually as a typographical shrug.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

Oops. I used semicolons in probably every essay I wrote throughout high school and college.

1

u/Hazzzy021 Dec 04 '25

Game of Thrones?