The, "Tells," of AI Writing Has One, "Tic," I Actually Personally Do a Lot AKA the Em Dash

I read a fascinating article by Charlie Fink where he breaks down how AI-written content can be prone to certain, "Tells," that make it obvious a computer wrote something. He is careful to point out some humans might engage in these behaviors and one or two things does not mean an AI wrote something. However, all of it together can be a dead giveaway. Always asking and answering rhetorical questions for a dramatic flourish instead of just starting with a statement. Quotes with zero attribution. Constant use of dashes. These are some examples and--wait, dashes?

Yes, anyone who reads my blog knows I love to use dashes/en dashes/em dashes/so forth. The em dash is the longest and is often used to show a shift in thoughts, add emphasis, and so forth. I looked at my past writings from the week and saw I loved to use my dashes, even putting one in a headline with, ""Marvel Knights: The World to Come," #1 is a Fantastic Read--and Generating Spec Heat as Well," on June 8th. Now, I am a human and not an AI (as far as I know, unless this is a Westworld situation). I also have made my distaste for AI, "Writing," things abundantly clear. Still, Fink discusses how, "ChatGPT favors dashes – over commas. This is the easiest tell – really," and uses dashes while doing so to be extra clever.  This made me wonder why, exactly, I am a fan of dashes?

Wait, there are times not to use dashes?

I thought it over and I feel like I got into dashes during college. No, this isn't a joke about, "Experimenting," with dashes in college as if it were my sexuality or drugs, although that would be a clever joke. I sincerely recall taking certain classes about literature and writing where all kinds of techniques were discussed, including en dashes and em dashes. I found em marks/a bunch of dashes quite handy the more I learned about them. 

As Merriam-Webster itself discusses, em marks, "can mark an abrupt change or break in the structure of a sentence...indicate interrupted speech or a speaker’s confusion or hesitation," and more! It is a darn useful tool for emphasizing things too, as they are "used in place of commas or parentheses to emphasize or draw attention to parenthetical or amplifying material. In this particular task, em dashes occupy a kind of middle ground among the three: when commas do the job, the material is most closely related to what’s around it, and when parentheses do the job, the material is most distantly related to what’s around it; when dashes do the job the material is somewhere in the middle." That's right, em dashes are a beautiful middle ground for emphasis in addition to being fantastic when writing dialogue or getting a point across--something I do on this blog often--and I just used some dashes here to prove my point!

I understand this whole article probably is only interesting if you are a linguistics and/or grammar nerd (hi, Mom) or fascinated by the weird ways AI writing can have odd tells (as others have noticed about the dashes too when I started looking into it) I guess the fact real humans can be prone to certain AI-centric tics proves that we should not assume something is written by AI if it has a few wonky aspects. That said, when many/all the little concerns pile up, then we might have some AI slop on our hands. Myself, however? I just love me some dashes despite being made of flesh as opposed to circuits.