Ask HN: Why do LLMs use em dashes so often?

Why is it that all of the LLMs by default use em dashes more than any other punctuation? Is it the versatility of em dashes? But even then how did LLMs decide that em dashes were the versatile punctuation marks. I have been reading aldaily for the last 11-12 years and I have not seen em dashes used that frequently. LLMs insert em dash in almost every long response.

2 points | by dwa3592 2 hours ago

2 comments

  • carlos_rpn 40 minutes ago
    Maybe this will help: https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-li...

    And I think I saw some others similar articles and blog posts over the years, but the tl;dr; is that a large enough ammount of text used in their training contains em-dashes because a large ammount of writers use them.

  • alexavilov 1 hour ago
    it's a quick and almost sure AI created text tell :)
    • dwa3592 1 hour ago
      what is? my post?
      • alexavilov 1 hour ago
        em dash overuse is a good indicator that text was created by AI