My apologies if this is listed elsewhere, I wasn’t clear on how else to search for a response. Every time I make a request, I cannot stop replies including a dash or em dash. I have added it to memory, settings etc. I will even remind ChatGPT not to use it and it will agree, and then do it immediately again. Is there any way to prevent this from happening? Thank you.

I am also having this issue and it is highly time consuming to remove them. We use GPT in our customer service but the dashes make our use of it less discreet if they are not removed. Any suggestions?

I too have the exact same issue. When I ask ChatGPT to stop using em dashes permanently, it continues delivering text with em dashes. ChatGPT is incapable of abiding by punctuation rules. Its format of the em dash is not even correct, as it misses space around the dash. The em dash does not match modern day communication. Nobody uses the em dash in their emails or text messages. This punctuation is irrelevant to everyday use-cases. When I request a punctuation change in 1 paragraph, ChatGPT takes the initiative to change the entire grammar across all paragraphs. This makes the use of ChatGPT terribly laborious and ineffective. I don’t know how to report this bug to their tech team. Any idea?

No matter what I do or try, it always adds em dashes back. Even if I put it in the universal instructions. In one session I had to remind it over 20 times.

Been trying to get it to stop for months but it’s only been a colossal waste of time. I get going on a creative idea or something business related only to get bogged down with trying to get it to stop. Imagine if this was your actual employee and you told it stop using em dashes and it agreed then did it again in the very next response, they would be fired immediately.

I’m not seeing what specific examples that were tried so far. Has anyone tried adding towards the end of the system prompt “Avoid: em dashes (-)”? That worked for me on the API… in ChatGPT itself yea it’s a serious problem. This way of writing is not practical to real world usage and likely will drive people to other platforms

I have asked mine to send itself a daily reminder that I don’t want dashes or em dashes in my messages.

Cannot get responses to not include dashes and em dashes

ChatGPT

elisa2 July 2, 2025, 2:58pm 6

F* hell!!! Been trying to remove the dash from it, to be honest i dont even know what a dash is, i dont know how to write it on my keyboard. I dont use it in none one the 3 languages im fluent.

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Cannot get responses to not include dashes and em dashes

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