The dreaded em dash

You can spot AI output from across the room, and sadly, it's everywhere.

I reckon I could spin up LinkedIn now and find some for you within the first 90 seconds.

All you gotta do is look for...

... Em dashes scattered everywhere (I don't even know hwo to do an em dash on my computer :()
... "Let's dive in."
... "I'd be happy to help."
... Whole paragraphs that say nothing.

They're the verbal tics Claude and ChatGPT default to when nobody's told them not to.

Once you know them, you can't unsee them, and as soon as someone has seen them, they discount what you've got there as AI slop.

... which, often is the case if you're using AI for your thinking instead of your editing.

Anyway, one of the things I've built into my AI systems architecture is persistant ToV checks. So, when I drop in a YT script to create social content, it doesn't add any of the things that make it seem liek AI slop.

A couple of those things include...

... Em dashes. The big one AI absolutely loves. Default behaviour out of the box for pretty much any LLM, weirdly. If your output has em dashes you didn't put there, that's the AI fingerprint. Tell Claude you want no em dashes, use commas, periods, or colons.

... "Let's dive in" / "deep dive." Dead phrases you need to tell Claude are banned. Same with "unpack", "unlock", "leverage", "elevate", "synergy", "transformative." Marketer-speak that means nothing. Just think of all those cringe worthy posts "business leaders" used to write you never actually read.

... Validating reframes. "That's not a failure, that's a feedback signal." "That's not a setback, that's a setup." Pure coach-voice that sounds supportive and says nothing. Strip them all, if for no other reason than it stiops you sounding liek a pretentious dick.

... The contrastive triple. "Not X. Not Y. Just Z." The pattern AI uses when it's trying to sound writerly. It's a shame on this one, I like to use a lot of triples in my writing. But not any more. One contrast is fine. Three in a row reads as formulaic (I do this myself when I'm not paying attention. So do you.)

... Hedging filler. "You might want to consider..." / "It's worth noting that..." / "In some cases..." Strip these and the sentence usually says what you actually mean. This is just basic writing advice really. Passive voice and hedging your bets doesn't get anyone to take note. Put your big persn pants on and take a controversial stand.

You can paste these into Claude's project instructions or your CLAUDE.md right now. Five rules that helps the output get less embarrassing instantly.

This is the lazy version though.

The proper fix is a permanent foundation that holds these rules plus your business context plus your voice across every conversation. That's what I'm building the freebie for.

In the next one I'll show you the bit most people miss when they try to set this up themselves.

Pete "no more em dashes" Boyle