Almost a year ago, I found myself hitting a really weird rabbit hole: trying to outsmart the AI. As someone who moderates some absolutely massive subs, you can feel the posts that just fell flat… They’re often too smooth, too pristine – almost rehearsed. And the wild thing? There has always been one terrible saying: dash.
This happened just when it seemed like everyone online was raving about AI detection tools. Remember that Hard Fork story, the one where the teacher failed the whole class because ChatGPT supposedly wrote their papers (even though, spoiler, they didn’t)? All that debacle made me shift gears. Was it possible to break down what made something “feel” like AI?
So I started logging everything on LinkedIn – just writing down everything I noticed as I played with the prompts. Honestly, I’ve removed almost every common AI move you’ve noticed… Well, except for one. That funny (seriously, *furious*) dash. It didn’t matter how many settings I changed or how many desperate “for the love of God, STOP WITH EM DASHES” instructions I followed, the AI stuck to those things like a bad habit.
I’ve tried everything: hard-coded rules, complex warnings, and maybe one or two completely irrational threats. Nothing went wrong.
Honestly, I almost felt like I was playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. Every time I hit an em dash, another one popped up somewhere else, as if the AI was deliberately mocking me. At one point I even tried the highlighted red warnings to see if there would finally be a clue – nope. Those dashes just kept ringing again.
After enough late nights and mild existential frustration, I finally figured out why. Turns out the software just can’t help itself. Hyphens are scattered throughout so many things people have written on the Internet—novels, news, you name it—that artificial intelligence has gotten into the habit, whether they wanted it to or not. It’s like trying to teach a dog not to wag its tail. Good luck with that!
It’s kind of strange to think that the humble em dash, once beloved by writers for its dramatic appeal, is suddenly becoming a red flag. I mean, in some forums, people have started to worry that too many hyphens sprinkled over their writing will scream “Made by AI! There’s even one commenter on Hacker News who basically said, “Use hyphens at your own peril.”
It’s kind of sad for those of us who genuinely love how a dash can connect ideas (cue Adam Cecil and his custom Apple keyboard shortcut – dedication!). Imagine suppressing your voice just because you don’t want to sound… fake.
The funny thing is, according to the people who actually study this stuff, the hyphens aren’t some secret AI telling. They only appear when writing AI because humans originally trained them that way. Real gifts? Look at things like word frequency or whether the writing is almost too perfect – how never are there typos. As Daphne Ippolito of Google Brain said, if you’re trying to play AI detective, you need to dig deep.
All of which begs the question: Are we going to rewrite our entire writing habits so we don’t sound like a robot? I can’t help but feel that all that paranoia is just a small part of a weirder shift—that AI has affected not only what we write, but how we worry about authenticity. Who knew punctuation could cause such existential dread?
I’ll be the first to admit it: the whole em dash fiasco still gets under my skin. I know, I should probably just let it go and admit there are bigger things to worry about, right? But I can’t roll my eyes every time the AI starts whipping them left and right. But these days, I’ve learned to pick my battles. It turns out that arguing with a robot about a divorce doesn’t mean world peace.
It really makes me wonder what all of this means for the future, not just for writing, but for how we define “real” online. If people are already up in arms over the little line between the words, imagine the chaos when no one can tell who (or what) actually wrote something. It’s almost funny and kind of scary at the same time.
Anyway, if you come across some magical hack that actually removes the em dash, please do me a favor and share it. Seriously – I might owe you a coffee or five. Until then, guess I’ll just keep fighting the good fight…or at least roll my eyes a little less dramatically.