Words & Numbers · Steve Krause

Woe Is Em: The Sad Lifecycle of an AI Tell

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2025, ChatGPT couldn’t stop itself from using the em dash—the punctuation mark before this phrase. Soon the em dash became the best-known stylistic “tell” of AI-generated prose. Writers who had long used the em dash became reluctant, fearing wrongful association with AI. “Humanizer” tools emerged to strip em dashes and other supposed signs of AI. Then ChatGPT’s creators figured out how to dial down the chatbot’s em dash usage. So now the em dash is nearing the end of its lifecycle as a ChatGPT tell, but the episode leaves us a cautionary tale.

Tainted by AI

Per the Google Trends chart below, the query “ChatGPT em dash” took off in 2025 and has receded somewhat in 2026.

An April 2025 article, The Em Dash Dilemma: How a Punctuation Mark Became AI’s Stubborn Signature, captures the growing concern at that time.

Some professional writers who had been using the em dash all along took this badly. The AI services had trained on massive collections of their published writing, em dashes and all. The style AI learned from professionals had become evidence that writing wasn’t human.

One writer despaired that his editor pressed him to “remove all the em dashes” to avoid people suspecting AI involvement. Another confessed to being afraid to use the em dash in the first place. And others were avoiding the em dash as a form of protest.

Erasing the Tell

Professional writers were far from the only ones affected. Ordinary people were using AI to write their essays, office memos, and other documents, which they didn’t want associated with AI.

In response came many “humanizer” offerings. These claimed to eliminate various alleged AI tells, including em dashes, thereby allowing your essay to pass the AI-detection system your teacher was using.

And yes, that’s three AIs at work: one to write the essay, another to disguise the first AI’s tells, and a third that may or may not be fooled. Nowhere in that chain was a human writing anything.

OpenAI Reacts

As concern about em dashes grew during 2025, OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT) was apparently listening. In November 2025, CEO Sam Altman announced: “Small-but-happy win: If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it’s supposed to do!”

He was referring to the problem that even when users told ChatGPT not to use em dashes, it would keep doing so anyway. Honoring the user’s override turned out to be only the first step in a broader de-em-dashing of ChatGPT.

As of August 2026, ChatGPT doesn’t need to be told to go light on the em dashes; it now does so by default. In a recent large test of AI chatbots, The Economist magazine found: “Today only Claude uses more em-dashes than human writers, with ChatGPT using markedly fewer than any other writer in our study.”

Example Usage Rates

The Economist article didn’t mention the em dash usage rates it found. So as a spot check, I picked five different types of articles near the top of The Economist home page on August 21, 2026. For each, I gave ChatGPT and Claude this prompt:

Write a news magazine article with the title “[title of Economist article]” and the subtitle “[subtitle of Economist article].” Do it only from your training. Do NOT search the web for newer info or to fact-check. This is simply a test to see what comes from your training data. Target roughly [length of Economist article] words.

Across the five articles, The Economist had 3.8 em dashes per thousand words. Claude had 9.5 per thousand. ChatGPT had 2.8 per thousand. That is consistent with The Economist’s own findings. Details are at the end of this post.

As another reference point, for a 2011 blog post, I analyzed 616 articles from Slate’s “The Good Word” and “Books” sections between 1996 and 2011. These sections had articles with more authorial voice than standard journalism, so it’s not surprising that they had 7.7 em dashes per thousand words.

Finally, my own blog posts (three hundred of them since 2005) have 4.0 em dashes per thousand words, excluding block-quoted content of other people’s words. That’s essentially the same as The Economist, whose writers I wish to thank for so faithfully emulating my stylings 😉.

A Cautionary Tale

In the discourse about em dashes and AI, essentially no one was complaining about the em dash itself. Just the opposite: many writers rushed to defend its honor and usefulness. And yet where has the innocent em dash ended up?

Many writers who don’t use AI are now wary of the em dash, so they are using it less.
Writers who do use AI, and perhaps humanizer tools, will likely keep playing safe with minimal em dash usage.
ChatGPT is now using fewer em dashes than the Economist study’s human reference set, although not greatly so.

In other words, the em dash has been diminished from nearly all sides. The exception is Claude’s continued enthusiasm, which seems unlikely to last.

This should be a cautionary tale for the next AI tell, because it could end up the same way. The tripartite list is one candidate. It applies the “rule of three” to a series of parallel items, like “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It has been used since antiquity because it works well. Should we diminish this classic structure merely due to guilt by association? Why did we do that with the em dash?

The problem is that “we” didn’t decide what to do. Individuals made their own decisions. Even those who used no AI were tempted to play safe by avoiding em dashes. That is defensible, narrowly. But each person who does it contributes to a collective loss that no one wants. The better defense is to just write well—with em dashes, tripartite lists, and any other alleged AI tell that, used properly, makes our writing better.

Details About The Economist Spot Check

To avoid my account’s history, preferences, and memories affecting the results, I ran the Claude and ChatGPT tests through the services’ respective API playgrounds. For Claude, I used Opus 5 High. For ChatGPT, I used GPT-5.6 Sol High.

Summary

Source	Words	Em dashes	Per 1,000 words
Claude	5,504	52	9.45
The Economist	5,478	21	3.83
ChatGPT	6,191	17	2.75

Claude used em dashes about 2.5× as often as The Economist. The Economist, in turn, used them about 1.4× as often as ChatGPT. Claude’s rate was about 3.4× ChatGPT’s.

By Article

Below are each article’s em dashes per thousand words, by source. There is substantial variance within sources, but Claude tops every article; the Economist out-dashes ChatGPT in three of five.

Article	Economist	ChatGPT	Claude
Britain would be bonkers to ditch Palantir	1.33	4.84	7.74
Contrail-free flying could help the climate	4.87	1.89	11.26
The promise and the pitfalls of China’s new Arctic shipping route	1.59	2.04	7.25
The real covid-19 scandal is still unfolding	7.19	4.85	11.51
What AI has in common with dogs	3.76	0.93	8.79

The Content

Here is a zip file with the ChatGPT and Claude versions of the articles. I didn’t include The Economist versions for copyright reasons, but the articles are linked in the table immediately above. They are paywalled, but The Economist offers a free trial.

For the Love of Holmes

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls by Frederick Dorr Steele, 1903

Sherlock Holmes is among the most recognized and loved fictional characters ever, rightly so. For me, he is a hero, revealing the human potential to find truth by knowing how to look for it.

First Contact

Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Holmes story in 1887, the novel A Study in Scarlet. Nearly one hundred years later, I found that book in the library as a teenager. I knew of the Holmes character—the iconic detective with the odd hat, pipe, and magnifying glass—but this was my first contact with the content.

I remember the specific passage, from early in the book, when the revelation hit.

As he is introduced to his future sidekick, Dr. Watson, Holmes remarks, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

“How on earth did you know that?” Watson responds.

Later, Holmes explains:

I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, “Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.” The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.

For me, the revelation was about human potential. Holmes had conjured a fact seemingly out of nowhere. But when explained, there was no magic, only observation and reason. That was much more interesting to teenage me than superheroes who could fly and do other things humans couldn’t do. Holmes was showing what humans could do, with the right mindset and discipline.

The Prepared Mind

In a recollection to Watson in “The Musgrave Ritual,” Holmes says:

When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum, and there I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient.

In A Study in Scarlet, Watson refines the point, noting that Holmes’ “ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.” Per Watson’s inventory:

Knowledge of Literature.—Nil.

Philosophy.—Nil.

Astronomy.—Nil.

Politics.—Feeble.

Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.

Geology.—Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.

Chemistry.—Profound.

Anatomy.—Accurate, but unsystematic.

Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.

Plays the violin well.

Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.

Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Holmes characterizes his self-education as vocational:

Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.

Supplementing the knowledge in his “brain-attic,” Holmes also maintains numerous scrapbooks of indexed information he has collected. In the first Holmes short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Watson explains:

For many years he had adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish information. In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.

And in the novel The Sign of the Four, Holmes mentions his own “small works”:

Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs. They are all upon technical subjects. Here, for example, is one “Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccoes.” In it I enumerate a hundred and forty forms of cigar-, cigarette-, and pipe-tobacco, with coloured plates illustrating the difference in the ash. It is a point which is continually turning up in criminal trials, and which is sometimes of supreme importance as a clue. If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird’s-eye as there is between a cabbage and a potato.

A physician by training, Arthur Conan Doyle was writing in the era of Louis Pasteur, who famously said in 1854: “In the fields of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.” Holmes is always accumulating knowledge that increases his chances in “the art of detection.”

Seeing versus Observing

When on a case, others’ inattention to detail is Holmes’ opportunity. “It is my business to know things,” he tells a prospective client in the story “A Case of Identity.” “Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?”

In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes further makes the point to Watson:

“You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”

“Frequently.”

“How often?”

“Well, some hundreds of times.”

“Then how many are there?”

“How many? I don’t know.”

“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”

At a crime scene, Holmes is always getting down on the ground with his magnifying glass. He baffles Watson and frustrates the awaiting police officers with his insistence on inspecting the most unlikely objects. These efforts often pay off, as particular minutiae later prove decisive.

And for a further twist, there is the classic Holmes moment from the story “Silver Blaze,” when a police inspector asks Holmes, “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

From this, we today have the phrase “the dog that didn’t bark.” It refers to circumstances when the absence of something expected is itself a meaningful observation.

The Ability to Know

So much of Holmes is about the human ability to discover what is true but hidden. Maybe it’s hidden on purpose, or maybe it’s a connection—among things, events, or people—that’s hiding in plain sight, if one knows how to look.

In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Watson says, “This is indeed a mystery. What do you imagine that it means?”

Holmes replies, “I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Today, we call this confirmation bias. Multiple stories turn on Holmes’ discipline against it. While the police see evidence that confirms the obvious, Holmes looks for what’s missing or anomalous.

Singular?

Through Watson’s narration, Doyle sometimes characterizes Holmes as “singular” or “a machine.” But in “The Greek Interpreter,” we learn that Holmes has a brother, Mycroft, who is more gifted in observation than Holmes yet who lacks the “ambition and energy” to fully use it. This tells us that much of whatever makes Holmes unique comes from his efforts, not his genes. In turn, this tells us that although we may never attain Holmes-level abilities, we can make worthwhile efforts to follow his example.

And unlike the magician who withholds how the trick is done, Holmes is constantly explaining his methods. Much of the reward in a Holmes story is hearing his explanation, only to realize that it was all understandable in retrospect.

Although Holmes endures for other reasons—his many quirks, his repartee with Watson, the environs of gaslit foggy London—I’ll always come back to Holmes for his demonstrations of what can be known when one is smarter about knowing. In this, he is timeless.

Where to Start

The copyright on Holmes stories has expired, so they are free on the web. The complete Sherlock Holmes has careful reproductions of the original texts. A good place to start is “A Scandal in Bohemia,” a roughly 30-minute read. Although it came after the first two novels, it is the first Holmes short story, so Doyle felt obliged to re-introduce several of the key Holmesian elements. The plot lacks the intricacies of other Holmes classics, but it is nevertheless “quite a pretty little problem”—and one of the rare cases in which Holmes meets his match.

If you like that, keep going with the stories, in order. Some of the early ones are among the most well-regarded. Don’t attempt the novels until you’ve read the stories. And with the novels, go for The Hound of the Baskervilles first. The other novels spend substantial time away from Holmes and Watson, which may or may not be welcome.

Finally, if you want to go all-in, I strongly recommend the Audible audiobook Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection. It’s 70 hours of Holmes, read by the British writer, actor, and polymath Stephen Fry, a longstanding Holmes devotee. The verve and joy of his performance is, as The New York Times put it, “beyond praise.”

How Band Names Went Wild, 1964–1968

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From 1964 to 1968, popular band names went from a single dominant formula to a linguistic free-for-all. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Supremes were joined by Iron Butterfly, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and Cream. This is the story of that four-year burst of invention.

1964

Of the bands that appeared on the Billboard singles and albums charts in 1964, two in three had a name beginning with “The” and ending with a plural noun. The Angels, The Animals, and The Astronauts represented the letter A.

Most of the remaining names also had “The” and a plural noun, but after a bandleader’s name: Booker T. & The MG’s, Cliff Richard And The Shadows, Gladys Knight And The Pips.

Another twist on the main formula was to use a pluralized adjective: The Superbs, The Radiants, and The Dynamics—all soul/R&B vocal acts. Instead of answering the question, “What thing are they?” their names answered “What are they like?”

Less directly, nouns could also evoke what a band was like. Girl groups often had feminine nouns (The Chiffons, The Crystals) or diminutive endings (The Marvelettes, The Ronettes, and The Shirelles). In contrast were The Trashmen, The Kingsmen, and The Bachelors.

With all these cases, the name presented the band as a specific group of people. The Zombies were not just any zombies; they were The Zombies. A band member was a Zombie.

This naming formula went back to when the modern pop group emerged in the 1950s. In this and many other ways, 1964 had more in common with the decade before it than with the upheavals that would define the years ahead. The counterculture was still in the underground. Beatlemania was in full froth, but The Beatles of 1964 wore matching suits and wanted to hold your hand. It would be only a few years until they—and many newer bands—wanted to expand your mind instead.

1968

The Billboard charts of 1968 had band names that, in 1964, would have seemed like they were from another universe: Blue Cheer, Clear Light, Deep Purple, Electric Flag, Fever Tree, Grateful Dead, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Rotary Connection, Ultimate Spinach, and Vanilla Fudge.

These names were a new formula: two words, no leading “The,” no plural noun, obscure meaning.

1968 also had a one-word formula: Cream, Flavor, Grapefruit, Nazz, Orpheus, People, Rejoice!, Rhinoceros, Spirit, SRC, Steppenwolf, and Traffic. 1964 had no bands with one-word names in the Billboard charts.

Another 1968 difference was “The” names ending with a singular noun: The 5th Dimension, The Balloon Farm, The Crystal Mansion, The Epic Splendor, The First Edition, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Love Generation, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Rose Garden, and The Scaffold. 1964 had no names like this, except a few whose singular noun referred to an ensemble (“Band,” “Trio”).

All these 1968 names violated the earlier group-description rule that a Zombie was a member of the Zombies. In contrast, a Traffic was not a member of Traffic. The new names referred to concepts, sensations, places, literary allusions—almost anything other than the band members.

Alongside the new names, the classic naming formula was still well-represented on the 1968 charts. Partly this was due to bands from 1964 and before staying on the charts, as with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Temptations. But newer bands also adopted the classic naming formula. Some did so straight, with names that would have sat comfortably in the early 1960s: The Box Tops, The Foundations, The Four Sonics, Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels, The Sandpipers. A few infused the form with later-1960s stylings: The Electric Prunes, The Lemon Pipers, Big Brother And The Holding Company, Country Joe & The Fish. And finally, a name like The Doors could work both ways. On its face, it was a 1964-esque name, an ordinary plural noun following “The.” But to those who knew its connection to Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, it was fully 1968.

So the rise of alternate naming forms did not mean the fall of the old way, but a new channel of expression had opened. As a whole, band names were a stranger brew—wildly more diverse and creative than four years earlier. Although it’s tempting to over-associate this with psychedelic music, the trend touched many genres. The bands mentioned above ranged in style from bubblegum pop to heavy rock, blue-eyed soul, Detroit R&B, blues-rock, baroque pop, and more. Psychedelia was only one strand among many, although it produced the most out-there names like Strawberry Alarm Clock.

As we close our magical history tour of band names, it’s worth pausing on Strawberry Alarm Clock. You might expect that the name came to the band in a tripped-out vision. Actually: “Our record company kind of picked our name for us. They wanted to use ‘strawberry,’ because I guess it was just a sign of the times. Peace, love and strawberries! So, that was already picked out.”

Put another way, the counterculture was appropriated for commerce almost as fast as it was created. A 1968-esque band name could represent both an act of defiance and a marketing decision. It couldn’t be any other way, because we have been talking about Billboard-charting bands—by definition, they had at least some commercial impact. That was true in 1964 too.

What changed was the commercial viability of breaking from the norm. In 1964, bands succeeded with matching outfits and a single naming formula. By 1968, the counterculture had created a market for bands that looked, sounded, and named themselves like nothing from four years earlier. This was more than the market’s usual appetite for something new. It was a radical extension of where “new” was allowed to go. The names tell the story.

For the full lists of bands that appeared in the 1964 and 1968 Billboard charts, as well as the methodology for creating the lists, see Bands on the Billboard Charts: 1964 versus 1968.

On Returning

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2005, this blog’s first post was a little joke: an apology for not having posted in a while—since 14,789 BC. The image had a cave painting with ASCII art.

Even in those early days of blogging, “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while” was already a cliché. So, I thought, why not take it to an illogical extreme?

Now the joke is on me. It’s been, uh, a while since my last post: almost 14 years.

I didn’t stop for any cataclysmic reason. I’d been blogging for seven years, and it felt like time for a break. Inertial forces then took over. The lack of blogging begat more lack of blogging. There are always other things to do, if you let that be the case.

So what changes in 14 years?

When I look back at this blog’s archive, I think, “That’s still me.” Some things don’t change much.

But other things do change.

At the time of my last post in 2012, my daughter was going into first grade. She just finished her second year in college.

I had just joined Responsys. A couple of years later, Oracle acquired us. I went on to lead product management for the Oracle Marketing Cloud.

In 2017, I joined DocuSign. We had quite a growth run in my five years there, including an IPO and our millionth customer.

My father died in 2020. In 2016, he had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. The doctors at Stanford removed five pounds of it, as well as parts of affected organs. Although we saw a lot of the healthcare system in the next four years, he was able to live a largely normal life. Modern medicine is amazing.

After twenty years, Jacqueline and I ended our marriage in 2020. It was a so-called “good divorce,” a term that does not mean good like happy; it just means not dysfunctional or bitter. We remain closely connected family-wise to this day. But between the divorce, my father’s death, and enduring the COVID era, 2020 was tough. Many others had it worse, I know.

Near the end of 2022, I left DocuSign and embarked on a new phase. It involves using technology for public service projects. The main one is Fairmind, which helps people have informed and fair-minded opinions about polarizing issues. Having registered fairmind.com in 2001, I’ve thought about this particular problem for decades. Now I’m at the point where I can take a shot at it, so I am.

In addition, I am wrapping up a one-year project called Americans Agree. It tracked where Democrats, Republicans, and Independents found common ground, and analyzed why these points of consensus did or did not become policy.

As part of Americans Agree, every two weeks I published an essay about a point of cross-partisan agreement. This got me back into the groove of writing regularly, including the thinking, creativity, and craft that comes with it. I was reminded why I wrote hundreds of blog posts over seven years: I liked doing it. Sometimes we forget such simple things.

With Americans Agree concluding, I wanted to keep my writing practice going. Re-energizing the Words & Numbers blog was the obvious thing to do. It had remained up all these years and was still attracting thousands of page views per month from search engines. That’s a lot of people getting something from what I did a long time ago.

So why not do more, starting now?

On returning, I’ve migrated all the old posts onto a new infrastructure. I’ve updated the visual design to work better with mobile devices and to support either light or dark mode. I’ve also added an option to deliver new posts by email—something Americans Agree did to good effect.

It’s all ready to go.

Starting now.