Why LLMs Love Using Em Dashes
dbreunig · x · 2026-07-14
The author asks: Why do LLMs love using em dashes so much?
They offer two hypotheses:
- Much of the training data consists of spoken transcripts, where people naturally use this kind of phrasing in longer sentences.
- There might be a reward mechanism that biases the model toward using fewer sentences and stringing content together.
It's a fun, small observation about model output styles.
More from AGI Musings
- ControlAI CEO says an international ban on superintelligence is needed to avert extinction risk — zetalyrae · 2026-07-22
- Gary Marcus says LLMs still cannot really do math on their own — GaryMarcus · 2026-07-22
- Gary Marcus says LLM math skills are like knowing only a car’s engine size — GaryMarcus · 2026-07-22
- AI may make digital work infinitely leveraged while offline life gets more human — illscience · 2026-07-22
- Better AI math could save researchers time by killing false conjectures earlier — prateekj · 2026-07-22
- AI’s economic forecasts are split by nearly a quadrillion dollars by 2035 — bittingthembits · 2026-07-22