First, can I say thank you all so much to our @essay-readers for volunteering your time to the students. What a great response we have had and you are all so generous with your time. (If interested, become an essay reader here.)
Two days in a row now, I have had students from two different states tell me they are concerned about using em dashes in their writing—because apparently Chap GPT likes to use them and it could be a red flag to AO’s.
I’m interested in this topic, not only as a person who enjoys using em dashes, but also in my work as a tutor.
Both the SAT and the ACT have been testing dash usage for as long as I’ve been tutoring. These tests use them, along with other conventions of standard English, as a measure of writing skills. (It’s a separate conversation as to how effective that is, haha.)
When I work with students on writing, there are plenty of occasions when the em dash is the best punctuation mark available. If a student is comfortable using it, then I tell them to go for it.
I myself love using the em dash and if one wants to emphasize something, it can’t be beat. It’s a great punctuation mark to use when a colon or comma simply won’t do because it shows that deliberate emphasis was intended. An example: I find it ironic that Chat GPT—the very definition of not needing to think when writing—has now become a means of diminishing the credibility of a punctuation mark, rather than the words it produces.
So has anyone else been hearing this about the em dash, or any other punctuation for that matter? I will continue to advocate for the use of the em dash, Chat GPT be damned!
I’ve definitely heard this and I’ve noticed it with ChatGPT. It over uses the em dash. In my usage it’s probably throwing at least one if not two into every paragraph. It’s made me more conscious of my own writing so that it doesn’t appear like ChatGPT generated text. I get students wanting to be careful with it.
I have not heard about this, but I have heard about “red flag” words. For example, this article by a Cal professor:
Honestly, I don’t know how I feel. Throughout high school, one of my daughter’s “go to” words had been “delve.” I told her to reconsider her use of it, based on the above article, lest she should be suspected of AI use.
But where does it end? And isn’t it ironic that the general advice is to be genuine in your writing to avoid such suspicion, but then when you are - such as using the em dash or a favored word - you fall into the trap of AI “red flags.” So how far to do you take your avoidance of potential ‘“red flags” and, if you start modifying your writing style to avoid them, doesn’t that then run the risk of sounding even more artificial and therefore also red flagged for AI?
Edited to add: I just realized that the above link cuts off the text unless you have a subscription. Here is a full version of the article, for those interested:
I have seen many more students using them. Unfortunately, chat gpt averages 1-2 per college essay. I am afraid, it makes the most sense to suggest people not use them (especially if their essay is showing 5% or more AI). Seems a colon, semi-colon, or comma is usually the better choice anyway. I might consider a single dash, but that’s as far as I would go.
Yeah, I don’t think you can stop technological progress and, while it’s trite to say things like “AI is here to stay,” the implications of that are actually profound. We can’t avoid it; if anything, we have to learn to lean into it in order to use it in ways that are both expedient and ethical. As the technology gets better and better - and we can watch it become more accurate in real time - it’s a matter of how we learn to live with it, and what that means in terms of the skills we are assessing. At some point, using AI will become a part of student writing. It just will. I mean, it already is, but for the most part it’s still considered cheating/plagiarism. I don’t think that will be the case in the not-too-distant future as we learn to live alongside it. But I have no idea what that will look like.
For the time being, as essay readers, all we can do is our best to discourage it. What will happen in the next 5 years -and how colleges will respond to that - is out of our hands for now. We just gotta keep chugging along…
Yes, the dashes are generally perceived as a potential AI generated output but it all depends on how the rest of the essay reads.
There are tools like GPTZero which. a check the % AI of any submitted text. I’d use them to get an evaluators view and try to make edits until it’s rated as mostly human.
The issue seems to be that none of these are very accurate though. So many examples of people putting in essays they wrote without using AI and these tools show a high proportion of AI generated content.
Adding to the chorus of voices here to say that several LLMs (not just ChatGPT, but also online grammar checkers) tend to overuse em dashes. I have not seen overuse of any other punctuation marks.
ETA: I asked ChatGPT to review my writing and this is what it suggested:
Adding to the chorus of voices here to say that several LLMs — not just ChatGPT but also online grammar checkers — tend to overuse em dashes. I have not seen similar overuse of any other punctuation marks.
Husband and I use ChatGPT a lot for professional communications. I remove the em dashes and emojis because I think it makes it look like I didn’t put in the effort to create the communication myself. My husband on the other hand just embraces the fact everyone is using ChatGPT and doesn’t shy away from em dashes or emojis when they fit the communication or social media application.
He is very plugged into the AI space and really feels like learning how to use available AI effectively will be a differentiator for future job seekers. With all that said, for my kid’s college essay, I would encourage her to write the first version and potentially use ChatGPT for editing and word smithing. The thoughts will be hers, but the articulation and understandability will be greatly improved with the assistance of AI. Do we know if the expectation of college readers is that kids won’t or shouldn’t be using these tools for this purpose?
Of all the times NOT to use AI I’d say college essay is tops. I read essays for local high schoolers and sorry but I can just tell when they’ve been spiffed up with AI.
I am not an essay reader… but I think that an essay written in your daughter’s authentic high school student voice, even if it’s a bit rough around the edges, would be far preferable to an essay that has been smoothed over into a generic AI voice.
The fact is that lots of kids are using these tools very heavily, and I am sure readers expect that… but I don’t think readers want to see that.
Do we know for sure? I don’t think so, but I can say a few things with reasonable confidence. I think they know kids are doing it, but I also think they don’t want to read stuff written by a robot.
It’s fairly easy to spot whole essays written by AI. Especially with supplemental essays. They are just too general.
AO’s read a LOT of essays. I guarantee they can tell most of the time when a kid is using mostly AI and when they aren’t. I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if the kids NOT using AI are actually going to soon find that advantageous.
I suspect that colleges are going to come out with guidelines for AOs about how to handle this issue. Frankly, when Chat GPT is doing the work, the essay loses relevance. I would bet that AOs are rejecting a lot more apps that show a student has used AI to do all their writing.
Think about it this way: Johnny has put a lot of effort into creating unique and specific responses, maybe not totally grammatically correct or punctuated properly. Jimmy wrote generalized but correctly punctuated stuff with good grammar. As an AO, I’m going to feel that Jimmy couldn’t be bothered to do a better job. I’m going to admit Johnny, provided all other attributes are present in the application.
We also should remember that AOs aren’t marking essays for grammar and punctuation. That isn’t the purpose of them. I think there is a basic expectation that they should be readable. For more selective schools, they need to be more than that, of course.
I am going to disagree that articulation and understandability are improved by AI. Again, they are not interested in grading papers. I agree with @tamagotchi 100% when they say:
It’s already so noticeable in the work I’ve seen with my students. Authenticity is absolutely very important to AO’s and AI writing isn’t authentic. But it’s probably only a matter of time before AI can start creating minor errors in writing to appear more authentic.
As an aside tamagotchi, if you’d like to be an essay reader, please feel free to join! Become an Essay Reader
I think it is ok to ask AI to rate your college essay, and then ask for areas of improvement. It is similar to having a person read and share thoughts. The issue is that AI wants to rewrite it for you, but you can’t take the bait. Instead, when it rates an excellent essay an 81, tell it that you want it to be more conversational and less polished. Then it will go up 5-10 points. Finally, you can ask them for 1 thing you should change in your essay to make the rating increase. Decide on whether you like the suggestion (without taking it literally) and then you have gone as far as you should ever go with AI IMO.
This is a super interesting conversation. Our kids have a large vocabulary and our oldest got flagged for using AI on a college essay her freshman year. She had to meet with the professor and convince him that it was, in fact, genuinely her voice. They were able to work it out, but it really scared me as a parent of eloquent writers.
I listen to a lot of college admissions podcasts and it seems like many of the AO’s want to see unique ideas and proper punctuation. I feel bad for these kids sometimes, the technology comes at them so fast and it’s hard to know where to draw the line. Especially if you think other people are getting an advantage by knowing how to use it in a more nuanced way, like asking it for tips rather than rewriting your whole essay.
You don’t need AI to use proper punctuation! It’s not too much to ask a teacher, friend, or adult who is a decent writer to read through and copy edit.