Is it AI or just good writing? The em dash debate explained

Comma? Period? Semicolon? No, we need something with more drama, like an emdash. But wait

can I still use it? People online are saying things like the emdash is a huge red flag

and I heard that an emdash is a sign of chat GPT writing. But what about the writers

the journalists, the storytellers, the creatives who've used emdashes forever to insert context or

at a dramatic pause. So the question of 2025 is, can you use a certain punctuation mark

and still be a good writer without people assuming you're using a chatbot

AI is really a challenge for us because we recognize that people in the workplace are using AI

so it doesn't help our students to ignore it. How are we using AI in a way that helps students

with workflow for profe Gallagher a journalism at Syracuse University Th when students rely too heavily on AI in their writing If I suspect AI it because you using vocabulary that seems like I don actually think you know what it means or where the vocabulary is you know you talking about ideas in a way that we haven talked about them in class

Despite multiple posts claiming the M-Dash is a dead giveaway for AI writing, Gallagher doesn't buy it, and plenty of other experts agree

I think part of the reason this trend has taken off is because the M-Dash is both a cool punctuation mark, it's really versatile, it's really elegant looking, but it also has a really cool name that describes really concretely what it is

Fun fact, the M-dash gets its name because it's about the width of the letter M

The N-dash, it's roughly the width of the letter N, but used more for things like number ranges

But how did we get to this point of people thinking they can easily spot the use of AI in writing

In a February discussion post on OpenAI website the company behind ChatGPT a user asked if the M was a quirk in training data We don know where the large language model came from that the generative AI was trained on

If everybody is using the same tools to synthesize the information and deliver it to people

everything is going to sound the same way, which we know audiences don't like

So instead of using AI to do the work for you, what if it helped your workflow instead

Bushnell says researchers have been looking into how collaboration can help spur creativity

The way collaboration works is when you ricochet off someone else's idea into new territory that you wouldn't have arrived at without that spark

AI can be incorporated into the writing process in the exact same way

And it makes sense that we talking about this because AI is everywhere According to Exploding Topics ChatGPT is the eighth most visited website in the world as of May pulling in 4 billion monthly visits outranking X and even Amazon I think the best way to cope with the effects of AI if you feel it sucking you in

is to think not about your experience as a writer or creator, but to think about the experience of

the person on the other end. Almost everyone hates reading AI because it's an indication

that the people producing this material don't value us enough to put their own time and effort

into the product. In an age where anyone can generate content, Gallagher says it's time to

think bigger. What do you want to create? And what do you want your work to say about you

If generative AI is doing the work for you, then what are we all doing here? And those are the

bigger existential questions that not just journalists, but like we as employees and employers

should be having. With Straight Arrow News, I'm Kennedy Felton. Download our app or visit

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