this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2026
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What a rude response, there are entire articles about this.
https://medium.com/@brentcsutoras/the-em-dash-dilemma-how-a-punctuation-mark-became-ais-stubborn-signature-684fbcc9f559
That's about an entirely different symbol, the em dash
Em dash: —
Dash: ‐
The fact you don't even know the difference is why it was such a hallmark of AI. It was previously used primarily in formal writing like published literature and academia
It's actually become more common in layspeak though because of AI, but primarily because it's automatically used when doing 2 dashes on many modern systems
Slightly funny story... I agree with the concept---I was mistaken (and corrected recently); and that many tools like markdown or Word treat TWO hyphens as an EN dash and to get an EM dash you need THREE!
I love abusing the semicolon, the ellipsis and the hyphen/dash(es) to indicate a mild pause when transliterating casual speech to text. To my horror, I'd been using the wrong one!
I also abuse parenthesis. I blame learning lisp as a child.
No, you are rude for spreading wrong information A lot of literate people write with ashes and no, I don't care who wrote what, it's a part of English, there is nothing to be said about it - deal with it.