Study of 88k chats confirms AI overuses the em dash
Pristine_Ad3669 · reddit · 2026-08-16
An analysis of 88,927 AI chats confirms LLMs overuse the em dash. Usage appears in 34% of responses versus just 2% of user prompts, contrasting with declining usage in books since 1979.
Why?
- Token efficiency: It sometimes uses fewer tokens than spaced alternatives.
- Perceived intelligence: It signals polished, sophisticated prose.
- Human preference: Trainers and labelers may favor it, teaching the model to reproduce it.
More from Research
- Tendon-driven hands debate mirrors early AV LiDAR wars — ATTlKA · 2026-08-16
- RAND research outlines preventing synthetic life as irreversible global risk — Miles_Brundage · 2026-08-16
- GOAL OS 8.8.0: Sovereign ASI Training Toolkit with Mission Constitution — Ghost_Pilot_MD · 2026-08-16
- Kimi K3 generates its own experiment API for optimizer research — eliebakouch · 2026-08-16
- Contrast: Brain Agentic Attention vs. Transformer Agents — lateinteraction · 2026-08-16
- RiO-DETR: Real-Time Oriented Object Detection with DETR, Achieving 2.7ms Latency — 机器之心 · 2026-08-16