Em dashes are mine. I will use them whether they have been appropriated by LLMs or not. I used to use commas in their place. That resulted in a much more dense post layout and far less readable text.
FWIW I actually use three dashes (-) and my blog's build system transforms those into em dashes. This is not a defense, but nor is "this character is associated with slop" an argument. Yes LLMs use lots of words, phrases and patterns. Would you rather I stop using altogether? I am all for criticism, but please pick something I can actually change and improve without cutting a part of my style for no reason other than "Claude uses it too!"
FWIW I actually use three dashes (-) and my blog's build system transforms those into em dashes. This is not a defense, but nor is "this character is associated with slop" an argument. Yes LLMs use lots of words, phrases and patterns. Would you rather I stop using altogether? I am all for criticism, but please pick something I can actually change and improve without cutting a part of my style for no reason other than "Claude uses it too!"