[93po]

i've noticed with ChatGPT is will 100% ignore certain instructions and I wonder if it's just an LLM thing. For example, I can scream and yell in caps at ChatGPT to not use em or en dashes and if anything it makes it use them even more. I've literally never once made it successfully not use them, even when it ignored it the first time, and my follow up is "output the same thing again but NO EM or EN DASHES!"

i've not tested this thoroughly, it's just my ancedotal experience over like a dozen attempts.

[creesch]

There are some things so ubiquitous in the training data that it is really difficult to tell models to not so them. Simply because it is so ingrained in their core training. Em dashes are apparently one of those things.

It's something I read a lottle while ago in a larger article but can't remember which article it was.

[EnPissant]

I have had 95% success rate telling it not to use emdash or semicolon.

[tacotime]

I wonder if using the character itself in the directions, instead of the name for the character, might help with this.

Something like, "Forbidden character list: [—, –]" or "Do NOT use the characters '—' or '–' in any of your output"