As a person that has been using en-dash and em-dash for years, this is annoying me as hell that they are used as a telltale sign of AI slop. I'm just a typography nerd, not AI!
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
415 points (96.4% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
34428 readers
5290 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
AI ruins everything.
Yeah, Al's a prick.
Despite that, let's not let billionaire parasites dictate our voices—I will type as I please. They'll have to pry the em dash from my cold, dead hands.
My annoyance is the rule of three.
This is ridiculous — No one uses em-dashes anymore
I apologize for my error! I will avoid using em-dashes in the future. Would you like to delve deeper into other tropes of AI writing? As of my most recent update, other tropes of AI writing include the following:
- Lists
- Surface level falsities
- Use of em-dashes
- Inability to find sources for information
- Repetition
- Using em-dashes
- Internal contradictions
- Uncanny positivity and encouragement
Any of these would be a great trope of A.I. writing — Would you like to discuss any of the listed items?
More than 3 items in the list, literally unbelievable AI
No thanks
Yes please I love this
It's crazy that this is an indicator of AI now. I remember when Word would automatically turn -- into the single long dash. Like when you would write something--such as a thought within a thought--like this.
It still works like this if you use LaTeX :)
For the record, you've used en-dash here, not em-dash. These are used mostly for number/date ranges. Em-dash is even longer: — vs – vs -
it's almost like the distinction barely matters - i mean, how many people would notice the length of that dash if this wasn't already a discussion about them?
Wait til they meet el dash
Me when I engage in em-dashes, rules of three, and promotional language — it expertly sets off sensitive AI language generation detection methods, cleverly appearing to other users that I'm using a Large Language Model myself.
It's short for EnorMous Dash. Not to be confused with the ENormous Dash.
Is that Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt kissing? This had to have come out in like 2014 and everyone must have lost their minds
Passengers
2016
Damn, that was actually my first guess, but I thought the JLaw love had mostly faded by then.
it's all the minus sign to me, I don't get it at all
this could be us
I had to look this up.. because I hate grammer and never practice it very well...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/em-dash-en-dash-how-to-use
grammer? i barely know her!
What is em dash
It's a dash the length of M. The smaller one is called en dash.
—
A dash that is twice as long as a regular dash.
It's an odd character that doesn't exist on any keyboard but AI uses it everywhere.
The only time you likely encountered it outside AI is in Microsoft Word. Word replaces 2 dashes (-) with an Em—Dash.
Notion does that too
German Microsoft makes them automatically. If you write word - word it automatically lengthens the - to a — but if you write it like word-word it doesn’t—and LLMs don’t put spaces in between
It's just alt-hyphen on Mac. I use it all the time
Em—dash.
Really forcing them to delve into that abyss. Recursively. Eternally.
you can delve into my abyss any time
best meme i seen today by gum
—
👁️👄👁️
em--dash