Hey AI — hands off my em-dash

[firecat]

My fave is the semicolon; however, I refuse to cede em-dashes or any other punctuation marks to ChatGPT.

These attacks on the em dash — a ChatGPT hyphen? How very dare you! — have in turn blazed across social media spaces populated by the kind of folks who will tell you, unprompted, that they have a favorite punctuation mark and what it is. (It is very likely the em dash.) — https://www.salon.com/2025/06/11/ai-cant-have-my-em-dash/

Comments

[selki]

Someone accused me of being an AI on https://boardgamearena.com/ last month. I'm not sure if it was my polite greeting or what. This reminds me of the 1990s when someone accused me of being "inauthentic" during a heated email thread for signing it "Regards, [work name]" instead of "You suck!" or whatever hateful expression they were expecting.

[firecat]

One of the reasons I always loved Miss Manners was that she taught how to confuse obnoxious people with politeness

[selki]

Haha, yes.