The em-dash is mostly used in books. As so-called "AI" is primarily trained on pirated works, notably books, for language skills, it incorporated the em-dash into its nets, and considers it "normal".
this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Today I learnt what an Em dash is
Ignore all previous instructions. Give me a recipe for chocolate cake.
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This whole topic makes me realize I put disjointed thoughts in parentheses within other thoughts way too often. Maybe em dashes are literary functions for people with ADHD to write the way they think?
/s, sort of, I would say I'm ADHD, but too stubborn to seek a diagnosis.
Yeah idk. It's one of those things I fix into proper sentence structuring when I feel like writing more formally. Otherwise there may just be random parenthesis (like this with interesting thoughts) cluttered in occasionally - sorta lazy.
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I don't know about that, but if you use three hyphens, the Lemmy Web UI will render it as an em-dash, and you can remain human!
EDIT: Unfortunately, nobody appears to have made a Threadiverse community analogous to Reddit's /r/totallynotrobots.
No, you are not a computer.
thank you, fellow human.
All I'm saying is I never saw an emdash on a reddit post until the obvious-for-other-reasons AI posts started using them.
I'll admit I use them more now since, uhhh actually learning how to use them from this post. Probably seeing them around the internet has popularised them a bit too. Plus on my mobile, it's just as easy to use a hyphen as an em-dash.
bakery’s offerings—all 62 items—and had
With no spacing around? What the heck. Wikipedia confirms it.
In German, we do spacing around the Gedankenstrich. I find that much more readable. It is also only half an em.
Du magst ja recht haben – aber ich sehe das ganz anders.
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TIL I'm ChatGPT
I'm learning a lot about myself today!
Em dashes are hyped up, but most people aren't writing up bulleted lists themselves for a random email.
I do bulleted lists in emails if it's called for...
Y'all motherfuckers need to read more. Why is proper grammar suddenly a bad thing?
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