The use of em dashes is a human right. I ask that people not discriminate against em-dash users—we should be a protected class—and I refuse to abandon them. Perhaps I’ll have one engraved on my tombstone. He died doing what he loved—dashing.

I encourage people to discriminate against me because I write like an educated African who works annotating AI training material.

Why not? I am a descendant of Africans. I am a mildly successful author by tech nerd standards. I was educated in the British Public School tradition, right down to taking Latin in high school and cheering on our Rugby* and Cricket teams.

If someone doesn't want to read my words or employ me because I must be AI, that's their problem. The truth is, they won't like what I have to say any more than they like the way I say it.

I have made my peace with this.

———

Speaking of Rugby, in 1973 another school's Rugby team played ours, and almost the entire school turned out to watch a celebrity on the other school's team.

His name was Andrew, and he is very much in the news today.

En dash for the win – the British are right when it comes to this particular style difference

Funny thing is I started using them in the last 5 or 6 years myself in place of commas where I wanted to interject some extra info. Of course I'm lazy and don't bother typing the actual em dash, I just use a regular dash. Now I feel gross using them because I don't want people thinking I turned my brain off.

I have always used double-dashes instead of emdashes, and it annoys me when software "auto-corrects" them into emdashes. Moreso since emdashes became an AI tell.

I also see AIs use emdashes in places where parentheses, colons, or sentence breaks are simply more appropriate.