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this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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The em dash thing annoys me because I actually used em dashes a lot in my own writing. Now I've had to change how I write to keep people from assuming I'm using generative tools for writing.
In the plus side, our mayor loves my writing style because he thinks staff should be using AI for everything.
I never even heard of an em dash until I started reading about AI. I was just using hyphens everywhere I was apparently supposed to be using em dashes. I am a stickler for grammar and correct punctuation (except for punctuation inside quotes which my internal programmer won't allow me to do the American way) so I've started using em dashes -- and now people think I'm an AI.
That's no —, it's two hyphens playing pretend!
Wait, what's the rule for punctuation inside quotes? I don't think I've ever noticed a regional difference.
In the US, the punctuation is supposed to be inside of the quotes, even if that punctuation wasn't actually part of what's being quoted. So if somebody says "your mother sews socks that smell," the quoted partial bit would be typed as "your mother sews socks." In Britain it would be "your mother sews socks". The difference might not be really obvious visually; it's whether that period (which is required to end the sentence) is before the end quote or after it. Apparently programmers in the US (like I used to be) have gravitated towards the British style because with string variables (which are generally delimited by quotes) you can't be farting around with adding phantom punctuation inside the quotes, even if it is grammatically correct here.
I'm I'm not mistaken, the reasoning for this goes back to the printing press era. The comma or period would be on the same type block as the quotation mark; dealing with individual blocks for , or " was too fragile or fiddly. So they had blocks for ," and ." that were used regardless of sentence structure
They’re useful—especially to avoid over-using other punctuation such as semicolons; I also use them to avoid back-to-back sentences with exclamation marks!
There you go. It's easier, clearer, and less pretentious.
Okay, but you've just created a sentence fragment, which is fine unless you were trying to use complete sentences.
Fragments are wrong in elementary school grammar, yes. In the real world, they're used by Charles Dickens and other sophisticated writers intentionally.
Did I not say “which is fine”?
I use them when connecting a thought in between another thought—for example, what I just did right now—and then returning back to the original thought. I use a semicolon when connecting two related thoughts together*; LLMs tend to only use one em-dash, so I'm hoping that by using two of them instead—and a semi-colon instead whenever an LLM would use an em-dash—there will be no confusion as to whether or not I'm human.
I use them with a space on each side -- which is apparently wrong. Sigh.
I like to alternate between sets of em dashes and sets of parentheses to obscure the fact that I'm using too many "asides" in my writing.
I do that too on top of everything else I said. It's an ADHD thing. I write how I think, with lots of tangents.
Fuck, dashes, embrace, Hegel.
I used to like the punch of "It's not just ___, it's ___" but I've pretty much removed that from my vocabulary.
I'm trying to stop using "for bonus points, ____". I don't have any bonus points left to give out.
Same, except "fucks sake".
I'm entirely out of fucks.
Oh god yeah this and bullet points
I'm going to start using "for bullet points, ____" and see if anybody notices.
Same, I would use that construction pretty frequently. Or "it's X not Y".
But now, it's not just trite, it is triggering.
I've just been using en dashes this entire time, was once accused of being a bot because I used them, and as a result I found out that I was using dashes improperly — and should instead use em dashes.
I think putting spaces before and after the em dash is incorrect, but I'm not sure. I do it because I think it just looks better visually.
Why do you care about the opinions of people who can't even fathom that someone might use Alt-hyphen to get an en dash (or shift-Alt-hyphen for an em dash)
And that's on Mac. Obviously on Linux there are even more options. (Compose key and so on)
I care when people think I'm lazy and outsource my writing.
I am lazy, but my terrible writing is my own, dammit.