kaariigai

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)

will update this every few weeks/months. alternatively, here are all my tagged writing basics/refreshers

Basic Grammatical Terms ⚜ Improve your Vocabulary

Parts of Speech ⚜ Punctuation Marks ⚜ Poetic Meter

Adjective or Adverb ⚜ Conjunctive Adverbs ⚜ Tips on Adverbs

IPA Symbols ⚜ "i.e." & "e.g." ⚜ Lexical Universals

Prepositional Meanings ⚜ Prepositional Phrases

Questions Part 1 2 3 ⚜ Avoid Wordiness

Words

Commonly Confused Words Part 1 2 3

"Troublesome" Words Part 1 2 3 ⚜ Transition Words

Word Alternatives Part 1 2 3 4 ⚜ Nonsense Words