the em dash conununundrum
We have all recently heard that if a piece of writing has been created using AI, then apparently it is likely that it uses em dash punctuation frequently.
This is of course very unfortunate for those writers that favour using the em dash in their writing themselves – especially as it is very popular in the style guides of the sort of newspapers that you have always thought of as using writing 'correctly'.
It stands to reason that if the AI makers have been ingesting large quantities of em dash infused writing for 'training', that they will of course be shitting out large quantities of them again in their effluential output.
If writers now use the em dash, on their blogs, or in any other published format of their own writing, there is apparently a group of ardent purists who who will point and shout "AI!" at the piece, in a manner roughly akin to a sixteenth century gentleman pointing at a ugly old woman with a pointy hat and a black cat flying by on a broomstick and shouting "Witch!"
The aesthetically-challenged woman may not of course be a witch. She may have a pointy hat and a black cat, and be flying by on a broomstick entirely innocently.
But it is also likely from frankly obvious evidence that she is in fact a witch – an understandable conclusion to reach – but it remains absolutely nothing to do with the em dash.
Using an em dash is nothing to do with witches. I have no idea how you could possibly be linking those two disparate things in your head.
Of course, you may genuinely be a fan of using the em dash. But now you may feel you can't easily, because you don't want to be accused of using AI to write your essays, or life bulletins, or blog challenges.
So what can you do to counter the insinuations and ensure that your writing is not EVER accused of being AI enabled/enhanced/generated in it's entirety?
Well, there are a few ways of dealing with it.
You can avoid using the accursed and supposedly tainted-by-association punctuation at all.
You can write freely, pontificate, punctuate, and nonsensificate to a highly individual degree, using whatever means of communicative scrambles that fell out of your whisky-addled brain at two in the morning.
AI wouldn't write this twaddle, would it? No, it fucking wouldn't.You can write what you want, how you want, and completely ignore all the stupid judgemental twats.
I like doing all three.
NB: Why is this post entitled 'the em dash conununundrum' using a stupid misspelling of conundrum? Well, it's all part of my sophisticated anti-AI strategy of 'just fucking about for the hell of it in the unmistakeable style of human'.
NB (2): Personally, I use the en dash. It's shorter
post link for sharing: https://skryblans.com/the-em-dash-conununundrum
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