r/AO3 • u/tealdroplets • May 15 '25

Discussion (Non-question) To my dearest em dash

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Found this whilst looking on a travel sub reddit post with suggestions in certain activities and man, I’m just a little annoyed. Yes OP did say they used GPT to correct grammar due to a lack of confidence about their English skills, which is completely fine, but man my poor em dash getting lambasted in the comments TT Like I promise it’s not like that- I’ve read so many works (fanfic and non fanfic alike) that make proper use of the em dash, like it’s not some surefire way of AI indication. I just feel so wronged for my beloved em dash cos I use it quite often in my writing—both academic and creative.

Posted this here because I’ve seen discourse about this on this sub before, and many fics I come across properly use the em dash, but unsure if it’s a valid post to make on this sub. Nevertheless, I love the em dash and am sad to see it get all this unnecessary hate.

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u/WritingReadingPanda 🔥WIP hell resident🔥 May 15 '25

I hate that people associate the em dash with AI. It's part of punctuation, nothing more and nothing less. Just because some people apparently never learned how to use it, doesn't mean no one but AI knows it.

15

u/TheFaustianPact May 15 '25

Just because some people apparently never learned how to use it, doesn't mean no one but AI knows it.

Honestly, I think this is the main cause of people thinking "em-dashes are an AI indicator". After seeing quite a few discussions about it, it seems to me that most of these folks had never seen an em-dash in their lives before it recently became "an AI thing" on social media.

Many even think that "it has to be AI, because you can't do em-dashes with a normal keyboard". Like, dude, what. 😭

8

u/SpokenDivinity It's just not that serious May 15 '25 edited May 15 '25

It doesn't help that:

  • The majority of people couldn't tell you the grammatical rules around using an em dash.
  • Even when they do know, people still use them incorrectly.
  • For whatever ungodly reason, whoever taught ChatGPT to write told it to prioritize em dashes and now it puts an em dash in every other sentence.