Em Dash in Reddit Comments, Interactive
intervolz.comFrom my blog[0]: "I instinctively type alt + 0151 (Windows) or option + shift + - (Mac). I don’t use it everywhere (e.g., code comments), but I often employ it in my writing—a habit I developed after years of roleplaying in online games with native English speakers.
An "advanced, trusted GPT-4, ChatGPT and AI Detector tool" flagged the text above as 100% "AI GPT". If I swap the em-dash for a hyphen, it drops to 48%.
The em-dash is a stylistic choice that's been around since the 1830s–used to create a break in a sentence.
I don’t know why this particular style of writing is flagged as AI-generated—as if real humans can’t pause for dramatic effect. We're left second-guessing our own voice and swapping out em-dashes for clunky commas—just to prove we're real.
If that makes me sound like a bot—so be it."
Using em dash is just fine. Academic writing teached me using it. However, I have to admit that use of AI is accelerating its „adoption“.
There is a sudden jump in late 2017.
A very sudden jump that doesn't further grow.
Browser or mobile OS keyboard change?
From iOS 11 it auto-corrects -- to — https://glog.glennf.com/blog/2017/7/6/dash-dash-it-all
tl;dr: The proportion of Reddit comments containing emdashes more than doubled since ChatGPT's release!
From the data: for several years before ChatGPT release, the proportion of Reddit comments containing emdashes was about 0.13-0.17%. For the few years after ChatGPT came out, it's between 0.17% and 0.41%.
Click the % button in the top right
I noticed it shortly after commenting, and completely rewrote my comment accordingly. Excellent research! If you were to do a write-up on how you did this analysis, that would be very interesting (as the number of comments involved is large).
The "dev notes" in the top right links to https://intervolz.com/emdash-observer-writeup/ I downloaded torrents of reddit comments, and processed them in Go, written using AI assistance. Then Intervolz did this thing and wrote it up.
Wait, why would people make torrents of reddit comments?