I'm convinced that the majority of people who claim that they used the em dash actually just used a hyphen - with spaces and everything.
It's also not just the presence of the em dash for me. You combine it with perfect grammar and the predictable "tone", and ChatGPT answers are extremely predictable.
1. As far as I know there is no keyboard layout (especially for English), that has an em-dash key, they all have hyphen/minus.
2. As far as I know, only MS Word will auto-correct the use of a hyphen to an em-dash. In all other instances - ESPECIALLY text boxes on web - if the user uses the hyphen-space-hypen pattern then it will posted like that verbatim.
So either a lot of people are drafting their posts in Word first, and then pasting into Reddit/elsewhere. Or...
It it looks/quacks/walks like a duck and all that.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] threadObviously we cannot verifiably prove this, which is why it's called the em-dash conspiracy, however it is an interesting change at the very least.
But the numbers don't lie. Before LLMs, em-dash usage in online text was minimal.
Whether it's now actual GPT output or people emulating GPT, is a different difficult question.
It's also not just the presence of the em dash for me. You combine it with perfect grammar and the predictable "tone", and ChatGPT answers are extremely predictable.
I do agree though, ChatGPT and AI all have common ways of speaking, and they use a lot more punctuation than most people.
2. As far as I know, only MS Word will auto-correct the use of a hyphen to an em-dash. In all other instances - ESPECIALLY text boxes on web - if the user uses the hyphen-space-hypen pattern then it will posted like that verbatim.
So either a lot of people are drafting their posts in Word first, and then pasting into Reddit/elsewhere. Or...
It it looks/quacks/walks like a duck and all that.