Can we be honest? Have you or have you not deliberately replaced the correct em dash (—) with a hyphen (-), or did something silly to make your writing less polished, hoping it would appear more "human" and not AI-generated?
My neighbor has been rebuilding his LI profile and CV and reached out to a semi-professional expert who had some noteworthy ideas. He also bounced a few of those ideas off me and there was something I found really amusing. He showed me how smartly he was not only using GenAI tools to create content but was also picking every single place where em dash (—) was and then replacing it with hyphen (-).
I couldn’t resist myself and asked why. He said the expert he was taking advice from suggested this and few other similar changes to AI-generated content so it would appear more “human”. I thought to myself, well, how about your “humanised” lines going completely out of line?
After two cups of coffee and his polite exit, I was left wondering: has GenAI changed our perception of good writing?
A few months ago, not many (at least in my environment) knew the difference or questioned the appropriate usage of “em dash (—)” and a “hyphen (-)”. For me one key exception being one of my managers who used to be extremely annoyed and upset with their incorrect usage (her other trigger point was “until vs till”).
Today, we seem to have reached a stage where people are intentionally changing correct writing because they worry it might look AI-generated. I find it fascinating at so many levels. What worries us more? Punctuation? Authenticity? Perception? Or something else? And more importantly, among these, what should actually worry us more?
Where should the focus be? Write clearly, consistently, and professionally or worry: "Will people assume AI wrote this?"
What about you? Have you consciously changed your writing style since GenAI became mainstream? Are you tempted to deliberately let blunders creep in?
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