Oh, We Are Having The Em Dash Discourse
We’ve done this a least twice in the last few months over on Bluesky, and it seems the part of the blogosphere within my six degrees of separation is taking its turn: what do we do about things getting flagged as having been written by large language models just because of the use of the em dash?
What’s wrong with an em-dash? It facilitates and breaks sentences for a more natural flow — a flow many other marks cannot achieve — and allows the reader to move through the pauses and thoughts of the writer. Like dancing steps, together, finding the rymth. The em-dash didn’t disappear from modern writing because it was unnecessary; it was because typewriters didn’t have space for the key — though many authors resorted to the double dash (--). But em-dashes existed long before typewriters. They made a comeback in academic and literary writing as computers replaced outdated tools.
Manu:
No you can't have them. Yes, we can still use em dashes. And no, I’m not going to stop using them because fucking chatgpt is abusing them. What if they tweak the instructions next week and tell it to use more full stops or commas? What are we gonna do then? Stop using those as well? Hell no. I’ll keep writing however I want, and if someone decides to stop reading what I write because they suspect it’s AI-generated because I use too many em dashes, or parentheses, or any other punctuation or word or whatever, well, good riddance. I’m not gonna miss you.
These are reactions to this Tadaima post, specifically, in which they surrender to the narrative and (truthfully? ironically?) vow never to use the em dash ever again.
However, after reading that Reddit thread, I now realize why people are fighting over it. People want authentic writing written by humans, not ChaptGPT. And people don't like feeling like they got "duped," so if they can look for clues to figure out if something is written by AI or a human, they're gonna use those clues.
Tadaima goes on to describe their past usage or lack thereof, of other various marks, such as the semicolon, parentheses, and Oxford comma. (Apparently, even the use of italics is supposed to be a red flag indicating a large language model.)
To use a popular construction in the em dash discourse: you can have my em dashes, my semicolons, my (sometimes nested!) parentheses, and my Oxford commas only from my cold, dead hands.
Here’s the thing, though: if you quizzed me on the proper usage of any or all of these things, I’d likely fail. Maybe if it were multiple choice I’d be okay—otherwise I’d flounder. In my writing, I use punctuation in essence to reflect and resemble how I conceive in my head the sentence would sound when spoken out loud, or in the voice of the reader’s inner monologue.
Marisabel talks about the rhythm of the words, and that’s what I focus on when I am writing. I”m pretty sure you could browse through my back catalogue here and find plenty of em dashes, semicolons, parentheses (nested, even!), and Oxford commas that are used “incorrectly”. (Well, probably not the latter; those are pretty hard to screw up.)
What matters to me when it comes to my writing is simple: is the reader understanding what I mean to say, how I meant to say it? If my thinking my way through an idea or a feeling is scattered, or breathless, or run-on, I tend to use punctuation to reflect that state of mind, regardless of what the actual rules of usage might happen to be for this or that mark.
Earlier this summer, I rewatched Inherit the Wind to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the so-called “Scopes monkey trial”. In it, Henry Drummond—standing in for the Clarence Darrow of the real trial—defends his cursing.
I don’t swear just for the hell of it! Language is a poor enough means of communication. I think we should use all the words we’ve got. Besides, there are damn few words that anybody understands.
So, too, for our poor (and wrongly-maligned) em dash—and for all our other punctuation marks; all that matters is being understood.