[brookst]

It’s a rough time for those of us who have always used en- and em-dashes and who structure documents with bullet points.

I’m fortunate that writing comes easily and quickly, but these days probably most people who read my docs assume it’s AI. I can’t bring myself to abandon my beloved em-dashes though.

[oefrha]

That people assume proper use of punctuation and clear writing are signals of AI just tells you about the sorry state of education. And it’s only going downhills from here.

[brookst]

I’m torn here — first instinct is to agree. But then maybe we’re just prescriptivists complaining about the kids not doing language right, like when people insist that some archaic meaning of a word is the “real” one. Maybe it’s just evolution of language and AI is writing in an older style because of training data?

[quinncom]

You can tell I’m not AI because I use the british-style parenthetical separator ` – ` (space en-dash space) instead of the American em dash. It’s subtle, but even the smallest acts of rebellion count.

[sambeau]

Is that a British vs American thing? I had always thought it was a newspaper vs Novel thing.

[petesergeant]

I’ve started writing “--“ and not letting autocorrect change it to be “—“

[pvg]

Perhaps this time of adversity will turn a bunch of formatting and type nerds into e e cummings - https://poets.org/poem/r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-g-r

[Brajeshwar]

Happening the same here too. I usually write to the point and regularly number or bullet my key points. I also love to use “–”, Oxford comma, and curl all of my quotes. Now, I’ve to prove that I’m not using AI with my emails.

[patrickmay]

If AI regularly uses the Oxford Comma, it can't be all bad.

[IAmBroom]

It thinks in Comic Sans, however.

[joshstrange]

The other day I wrote a long (a couple paragraphs) iMessage to 2 friends. I used bullet points ("-") in it and it was detailed. After I sent it I got the response "Did AI write this?" to which I was rather annoyed. Not only that a friend of mine would think I would send them AI Slop is a private group message but also that somewhat implies "I don't think you wrote this".

Now I know they were partly joking and they are the type of person that might not see sending AI-generated response as rude/distasteful (like I do) but it did make me sad for the state of the world. I'm sure many people just slap AI slop into all sorts of conversations with people they call "friends", I don't get it. I use AI for things I don't want to do, talking to my friends is not one of those things.