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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1732 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Given the relatively high median eloquence of posters on this site, perhaps it's the wrong place to ask but I've been dealing with a rather frustrating issue. I find that my natural writing style (which I've had since I started writing essays in grade school with the usual refinements that come with age) tends to be pretty easily mistaken for LLM-style writing. I don't really know what that says about me as a person. Regardless, I've cut out em-dashes and negative parallelisms despite having used them for years. Anyone else encounter this issue and has it changed your approach to writing at all?

I’ve almost entirely abandoned negative parallelisms, and I’ve become much more judicious in my use of the em-dash. If I’m writing for an audience who knows nothing about me (for example, reference letters, external emails, and job application cover letters), I avoid em-dashes entirely.

Yeah, the em dash has been destroyed. It's infuriating, because there are so many sentences that are punchier with a dash thrown in.

I'm glad in many ways that I finished my bachelor's in a writing-heavy field before the advent of generative AI.

It's infuriating, because there are so many sentences that are punchier with a dash thrown in.

My man, just put in the minus sign :trollface:

For professional or semi-professional writing, that appears sloppy and unprofessional.

For personal writing, it makes no difference. Normies can't tell the difference between ASCII 0x2D (-) and Unicode U+2014 (—). Even when writing dashes with "--", I've been accused of being AI. The assumption among sophisticated audiences is that you AI-generated the text and then edited the characters you used to disguise it. And most people aren't so sophisticated that they're looking at detailed character codes, they see any writing with dash-separated clauses and they presume it's AI.

they see any writing with dash-separated clauses and they presume it's AI.

Good. Maybe we'll finally get rid of that stupid looking em-dash. Let the hate flow through you.

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