LLMs don't own em dashes—I do

Em dashes: 39

Em dashes are the best punctuation mark—but unfortunately they have fallen from their former glory—usurped by a false narrative. Many people are so colored by their AI hatred that they cannot conceive of a world with em dash usage outside of ChatGPT

Now, don’t get me wrong—I love a good AI slop shaming as much as the next person—but this is a pyrrhic victory. Judge slop for sloppiness—is it not slop in itself to outsource your opinions based on a coincidence?

Em dashes have carried us from clause to clause through centuries of strife and conflict—all for what? Why must you be so ungrateful—do you realize your actions have consequences? Writers now avoid using em dashes, lest they and their lawyer are sentenced to lethal injection without trial

I don’t care—I’ve been using em dashes far longer than LLMs have—and I will gladly overuse them to spite the em dash haters—I can and will out em dash the LLMs. I added an em dash counter to this very blog—I am very committed to protesting the travesty that is em dash avoidance

Before you today, I have several exhibits where I was sentenced to the brazen bull for simply using a valid piece of English grammar

Internet people are not very good at critical thinking

Programming communities in particular have a penchant for strong opinions and dogma—but this is especially egregious. For example—many moons ago—I joined a programming Discord and started chatting it up about tech. Almost immediately, I was accused of using AI to write my messages

20jasper - Oh cool—still a cast but without arbitrarily adding a key with potential collision. How would you discriminate with the brand? (and why would you want to?)

Random Discord Person - is this…ai

20jasper - I don’t mean something like asking to write code for you—j…

Random Discord Person - please tell me you did not just use AI to write that message

I left shortly thereafter—is it really so implausible that a real human being would continue to use punctuation consistently popular over centuries? Why must we all be so impetuous? If I had the power in my being—you’d all be sentenced to a 12,025 dollar fine and 10 months of probation for your insolence—after a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of course

Setting that mess aside, let’s deconstruct the most common arguments against the em dash

It’s not even on the keyboard!

Many people are unaware that there exists more than one keyboard layout, operating system, and application in the world

I am fallaciously told that I cannot possibly type an em dash without doing one of the following

  1. running all my messages through ChatGPT
  2. going extremely out of my way to type Alt + 0151 or some other arcane key combination

For 5+ years, I’ve had em dash (—) bound to alt + - and en dash (–) bound to ctrl + alt + -. I wrote an AutoHotKey script to do this years before ChatGPT was publicly released. If you want receipts—I uploaded the em dash script to GitHub in March 2022—8 months before ChatGPT was publicly released

Even if this weren’t the case—only some platforms default to awful shortcuts—there are many that are quite convenient

Only people who don’t know English use em dashes

If this sounds oddly specific—it’s because it is! I was indeed told I don’t know English for using em dashes

I guess all those writers are wrong and don’t know anything. If only someone had told them earlier

I understand where they may be coming from—oftentimes to bridge the gap people who learned English as a second language or don’t know English will turn to tools like Google Translate or ChatGPT for help. But once again, correlation does not mean causation!!! Calm down for a second and think. Native English speakers use them—and even if they didn’t—would you rather non natives be sectioned off from a large portion of the globe?

Only .01% of Americans use em dashes and no one in Europe does

I have hatred and rage in my heart. Be glad you aren’t within piledriver range

Does no one read longer form literature anymore? Why do LLMs use em dashes? Real writers and editors use them

Please—I beg of you—read just one page

Em dashes are only for fiction

No—Stop it

I’m not explaining why this is a bad argument—don’t care—didn’t ask

The iron maiden for you and your firstborn son

But—

Did you hear what I just said? The iron maiden for you and your firstborn son. You know what? Your dentist too

If you’ve been scared away from using em dashes by AI accusations—please just tell them to shut up—write whatever you want, however you want. Sentence them to whatever punishment your heart desires

I was inspired to go with the faux authoritarianism vibes by Shaiie_Foeva’s great content doing the same with potlucks. It was a great vehicle and cause for my hyperbolic rage

While researching, I found no article better than Stop AI-Shaming Our Precious, Kindly Em Dashes—Please by Brian Phillips. It inspired the hyperbolic violence in this article. Brian explains what em dashes are and why they are valuable in an entertaining way—avoiding belaboring the point with a grammar lesson like most articles on the topic do—it has real soul