[ SECRET POST #6852 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6852 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #978.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know your situation, OP, but have you actually ever been accused of using gen AI (by someone OTHER than a spam comment bot, because those are unfortunately a thing...)? In my experience, it's really rare. I also use em dashes in my fiction writing all the time and no one has ever said anything. Also, I'm someone who almost never uses em dashes in my day-to-day communication but use it a lot in fiction and I think that's fairly normal, and a lot of the "em dashes are suspicious!!" kind of posts on social media I'm pretty sure are referring to informal communication rather than, like, fiction or formal published writing, because like, yes, it's incredibly weird and jarring when (e.g.) you get an email from a student that is several meaty paragraphs of full, typo-less sentences, complete with clean, formal punctuation (like em dashes) to tell you they're going to miss class this week or whatever. Like, that's a two-sentence email, not a 3-paragraph email, and you don't need to proofread and clean up and use proper formatting for an email meant to tell someone something very quick and minimal. But if someone wrote several clean paragraphs complete with properly-formatted quotes and punctuation (including the use of em dashes) in a blog/Substack post or article or mini-essay, or a piece of fiction, I would not blink. I would actually EXPECT that level of effort and proofreading and visual polish in that medium.

So yeah, are you sure the "em dashes are AI!!" people are even talking about your kind of writing? Setting those AO3 spam bots aside, I have just never seen someone hound someone else for using em dashes in formal published writing (which fiction is, even fanfiction!). But maybe I am sheltered/naive to how bad/overactive the AI paranoia is out there.