I enjoy writing.
I write for many reasons — for my blog, for my product, for myself — and the act of putting thoughts and experiences and stories into words that take the reader with me on the sometimes-rocky trail of my inner dialogue and back out with some sense of shared experience can be immensely satisfying. When it works.
We all have our own styles. How we think about words and how we structure our thoughts is deeply and personally unique. We may differ on the right ways to write — whether we're violating some golden rule of grammar or strictly abiding by it — but in the end the words are ours.
Mostly.
It's a different world these days.
Emdashes, one of my favorite — if perhaps overused — writing tools is seen by many as a clear sign of AI slop. Of a soulless machine-generated algorithmic ensemble of pointless words worth skipping.
Many gladly let AI do their writing for them. Many wouldn't feign to entertain the thought. And many are somewhere in that middle. Passing observers won't always tell the difference, instead putting their faith in their assumptions.
I myself, I enjoy writing — the art of it, the experimentation and rule-breaking, the challenge — and I very much enjoy the occasional (or not-so-occasional) emdash.
I know I'm not alone. And it's not just about emdashes.
So let this be a signal, which anyone may drop into their own works:
Not written by AI.
— Emdashes mine. —