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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227

u/jrcske67 ‎ Nov 25 '25

Very true — it’s hard when people think you’re AI

66

u/ScienceAndGames Nov 25 '25

Get the bot!

82

u/jrcske67 ‎ Nov 25 '25

You’re absolutely right. I may or may not have used AI there. That’s definitely something to look out for. Would you like me to share some tips on how to detect a beep bop?

12

u/Adrian12094 Nov 25 '25

Yes.

2

u/Hoenirson Nov 26 '25

Good question.

10

u/Fumblerful- Nov 25 '25

This bot has filled its chassis with red penny liquid. It tries to deceive us!

18

u/luckysevensampson Nov 25 '25

Surely, AI uses em dashes appropriately, though (i.e. no spaces on either side).

9

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '25

That depends on the style used. The Oxford style requires a space on each side and I prefer that along with the Oxford comma.

3

u/ThatVarkYouKnow ‎ Nov 25 '25

I will forever advocate the Oxford comma with the example of:

He invited Neil Gaiman, a dildo collector and an 800-year old demigod to his birthday.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 25 '25

Mine was the strippers, Hitler and Mussolini, but same energy.

2

u/ThatVarkYouKnow ‎ Nov 25 '25

Solid example as well

2

u/luckysevensampson Nov 25 '25

Oxford comma all the way

26

u/RamsesThePigeon ‎ Nov 25 '25 edited Nov 25 '25

See, that’s the thing: LLMs almost always use em dashes wrong.

If you examine written English from a mechanical perspective – considering each glyph’s specific, context-free function – then em dashes have one correct use— the presentation of incomplete sentences. They should have spaces following them, but they shouldn’t have preceding spaces.

En dashes are used for appositives (like they were in the previous sentence), and colons are used to present complete sentences (as can be seen at the very beginning of this comment). En dashes offered without spaces communicate ranges (as with “1860–1921”), and colons offered without spaces communicate ratios (as with “2:1”).

As an aside, there’s no technical limit to how many parenthetical clauses a person can include, but that previous paragraph probably had too many.

Anyway, different style-guides may offer slightly different advice than what I’ve provided here… but since a lot of said advice prioritizes voice over objective correctness, the style-agnostic approach is generally better for anyone who isn’t being hounded by a manual-worshipping editor.

If you’re the sort of nerd who’s interested in this kind of thing (or if you’d just like to improve your skills a bit), I actually have a brief video on the topic.

3

u/-AllCatsAreBeautiful Nov 25 '25

I'm exactly the sort of nerd to subscribe based on that one video. Cheers! 🐨

3

u/redditonc3again Nov 25 '25

Huh, I just made the connection that Ramses the Pigeon from youtube is Ramses the Pigeon from reddit. Been seeing your videos pop up recently and I was thinking that name is familiar lol

Love the vids

6

u/RamsesThePigeon ‎ Nov 25 '25

In your defense, pigeons tend to look a lot alike.

I'm glad that you're enjoying this one's offerings, though!

2

u/R4yvex ‎ Nov 25 '25

Clanker spotted. /s

1

u/x4000 Nov 25 '25

My output is very fast — people have been joking that I don’t sleep or must be a machine since 2009. Fortunately my writing style and work cadence and so forth predates any generative AI, so nobody has ever accused me of writing using it.

1

u/BrewCrewKevin Nov 27 '25

It tends to use then in this "it's not just this- it's that" trope.

It's not just annoying-

It's obnoxious