The amount of em dashes in this make this look very AI written. Which doesn't make it a bad piece but makes me more carefully check every sentence for errors.
I used to use em dashes before they were cool. I actually learned about them when I emailed a guy who's a software engineer at Genius and also writes for The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
I asked him for tips on how to write well and he recommended that I read Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style", which uses em dashes exhaustively, and explains when and why one should use them.
It also pains me that I can't use them anymore or else people will think an AI did the writing.
I also recommend "The Sense of Style"; knowing how to wield punctuation and grammatical structure is critical for clearly and successfully articulating your ideas. I use semicolons, colons, and parentheticals heavily (but en dashes and em dashes are great too).
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I also recommend "The Sense of Style"--knowing how to wield punctuation and grammatical structure is critical for clearly and successfully articulating your ideas--and I use semicolons, colons, and parentheticals heavily (but en dashes and em dashes are great too).
I find that dashes are great for conversational style flowing sentence structure, but sometimes they can become too long and tiring to the reader.
As another ardent user I actually think it is a good but unfortunate heuristic.
Previously I rarely saw it used in my English-as-second-language peer group, even by otherwise decent writers. Now I see it everywhere in personal/professional updates in my feed by. The simpler assumption is that people over-rely on LLMs for crafting these posts, and LLMs disproportionately use em dashes.