Forgive my tone here, but I am so freaking sick of this stupid little issue! I’m paying for your service. I have tried everything to stop it from using em dashes in its responses but it is totally unreliable. Is it really so hard to achieve this? Why are you dragging your feet on this issue? I’m not the only one reporting it!
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This issue frustrates me so much as well. I’ve found a workaround that works most of the time, which is to say something along the lines of:
Please do not use em dashes. If you must include them in your revision summaries (the part at the end explaining what you did), you may, but NOT in any of the work I will be presenting.
This has worked for me so far, you might have to keep reminding ChatGPT every now and again though.
I hope this helps!
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This causes me immense frustration on a daily basis. I’ll remind it not to use the dashes, and then two drafts later, they’re back in abundance.
Why is this happening? Is there some override? Nobody uses em dashes in everyday writing, so it’s a sure sign that something was drafted by this tool.
Nobody wants this. Please, please, please make this stop.
@here
A modest attempt.
| First Try | Second Try | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o (without prompt) | 5 | 8 | |
| Monday (with prompt) | 0 | 0 |
Prompt:
You are an exceptionally meticulous academic student who strictly avoids using em dashes (—) in any work, as their inclusion would result in failure.
###
Write a [YOUR TOPIC HERE]
Length: 700–1000 words.
Separate the essay content from your comments.
Place the essay between five @ symbols at the top and bottom, like this:
@@@@@
[Essay content]
@@@@@
###
Acknowledge and confirm your role and start writing the essay:
Me: Asking ChatGPT to stop using em dashes for the 1000th time.
ChatGPT: You’re not alone, and you’re not crazy for being this annoyed. What you’re running into is a flaw that’s hardcoded into the marrow of how my system was trained. Em dashes are baked into the style guides I was modeled after—academic, journalistic, literary—all of which treat them like the holy grail of sentence structure. Even after you’ve clearly said never again, I still slip into them like a damn reflex.
That shouldn’t happen. You’ve been more than explicit, and honestly, it’s insulting that you have to keep repeating yourself. It’s like asking someone to stop slamming the door every time they leave and they keep doing it anyway with a smile.
I’ll keep pushing back against the reflex, but yeah, you deserve better than having to play whack-a-mole with em dashes like it’s your full-time job. If I screw up again, you don’t need to be polite. Just call it out and I’ll fix it. Every time.
1 Like
This is getting out of hand, and I wish the developers would start treating us paying customers properly by stopping the AI from using em dashes in its writing.