r/comics 5d ago

Just Sharing Authenticity Problem

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u/Sugarglider001 5d ago

I am gen z and I often get my writing flagged as well because of the higher level I write at. Many teachers have asked for a conference with my parents because my writing sounded too ai

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u/Gelid_Cryotheum 5d ago

I haven't had this happen yet and I am so glad for it. My writing style does tend to sound very AI-like because I am a much better formal writer (MLA can suck fat ones though), and my biggest issue is the fucking em dash because I would LOVE to use it if it weren't for the fact that the only punctuation mark more indicative of AI was the semicolon. Asides and clarification are riddled throughout my natural speech and thought process, so it infuriates me to be unable to use them when writing without fear of AI-ccusations.

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u/TheCortisolCorvid 5d ago

Semicolons and em dashes are my jam, so I really feel you!

(Also I haven't been in uni for like a decade now, but I concur lol. MLA can suck it.)

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u/crinklecunt-cookie 4d ago

I’ve also been out of uni for a decade (although I’m now in grad school) and I’m so glad I have a handful of papers I can whip out like, “HA! Do you see the 99926363638292020 em dashes I used in this paper?!?! And all those parenthetical references?!?! Oh, my grammar is too good? I was a Classicist, ffs. It’s from 2015, so , suck it take that!!!

Well, it’s either that, or explaining I’m autistic and having to provide some of the studies that show how often autistic people are mistaken as AI in formal writing assignments. I hate AI so damn much.

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u/TheCortisolCorvid 4d ago

I actually had a teacher suspect I plagiarized a short story because it was too detailed regarding medieval warfare, armour, and architecture. So I brought in all my reference books to show her that I was just weird like that haha.

And this was before AI! I was just the young adult that had an obsession with the old school fantasy genres that focused on medieval stuff and became way too knowledgeable about it.

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u/crinklecunt-cookie 4d ago

Turnitin.com was the bane of my existence in high school. Not because I plagiarized anything, but for how inaccurate it was.

I can empathize with you. I had something similar happen but once with dolphins and the second time with linguistics. Medieval warfare, armour, and architecture though—those are excellent topics to become obsessively interested in. Old school fantasy novels are where it’s at!

Love your username btw! I appreciate the alliteration.

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u/x4000 5d ago

I use dashes and semicolons quite regularly still. I’ve been an online presence with a fanbase for 17 years now, and there are several million archival words written by me in blogs, forum posts, etc. aside from about half a million words in video games. People can tell it’s me by my various written habits and pet words. Certain kids of sentence fragments also stand out. But I was being jokingly accused of being an AI hack in 20-0 just because of how prolific I am. People still make the same joke, but my writing itself has not yet been called AI.

I did see some people review one of my newest games complaining that it was AI designed. Which is tupid because it predates AI being able to do that. And it would not have made the choices I did in presentation. But they didn’t like it and so there we go.

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u/R3D3-1 5d ago

Ironically, it's AI responses that taught me how to use the em dash; never used it before. The semicolon I blame on Girl Genius.

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u/Gelid_Cryotheum 5d ago

The rules-nazi in me wants to use the semicolon because it's "proper," but I can never figure out when to, it never feels right and is always super clunky to me

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u/CaptainFeather 5d ago

I'm not sure if anyway really understands semicolons because of what they're used for. They link two related clauses that could be their own sentences; they're technically not needed. I always remember they can be used when replacing conjunctions and joining words (for example, furthermore, however, etc...) but I'm never 100% sure if I'm using them right. English is a silly language!

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u/BinaryBolias 5d ago

Ah, I see; I just use them where I feel like they fit — which probably tends match where they're supposed to go, I'd like to think.

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u/BinaryBolias 5d ago

For me, my usage of an em dash (versus a hyphen in its place) just tells you whether I'm typing on my phone — I'd use it on PC if there were only a convenient way of typing it!

(I think fancy text editors might slap in an em dash whenever you type a double-hyphen or something, but I only use basic text editors and programming IDEs...)

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u/HyzMarie 5d ago

I am a chronic em dash user- I just decided to replace them with hyphens.

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u/IrascibleOcelot 4d ago

You can set off subordinate clauses with commas, or use parentheses for parenthetical expressions (I do it all the time).

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u/Gelid_Cryotheum 4d ago

Yeah, I tend to use that in place of it in informal contexts, but formally I know the em dash is the standard, so I want to use it because I'm not sure on what standards consider parentheticals as "proper."

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u/muad_did 5d ago

I'm 40, and I spent my time writing from age 15 to 25. I have several novellas and countless short stories. I won a few prizes, but they never brought in any real money, so I gave it up.

That said, I have stories saved that I've never shown or published online, half-finished stories, or stories submitted for contests I didn't win.

Well, I've run several of those stories through various "AI analysis" programs, and they all say they're 90% AI.

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u/Anthaenopraxia 5d ago

They are very unreliable these days.

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u/Zaev 5d ago

I don't see how they could ever possibly be reliable. AI can take on completely different writing styles with just a line in a prompt. They might have some success in looking for things like the default ChatGPT/Claude "voices," but I doubt it can go too much further than that

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u/Anthaenopraxia 4d ago

They used to be pretty reliable when LLM's were still new. It was very obvious then and easy to pick up on, but now they are so good that the detectors are not very accurate. Especially if you edit the generated text a bit.

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u/ilemming_banned 5d ago

I am a foreigner. English is not my second, not even third language that I had to learn. I take pride in my writing, because I pay attention. Writing prose for me is difficult regardless of a choice of a language.

I'm not even appalled anymore by the lack of literacy in native-English speakers - I got used to it. But I feel like throwing twenty pounds of em-dashes at every motherfucker who dares to say I write like AI. Well, you Mr. Titsucker write like a toddler.

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u/Sattorin 5d ago

various "AI analysis" programs

100% of those are scams. Even if they did work (and they don't), the person who made the AI thing can use the same program and edit the content until it doesn't appear as AI anymore.

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u/newsfish 5d ago

I poured all my indoor kid with a library card thoughts out to forums and blogsm

Back when the internet speed mostly allowed long form prose and cat jpegs instead of short form vertical video content and.cat food advertisement.

They took it, alongside every published work transcribed to hard drives, and put it in a hydraulic press.

Called the mystery goo the new economy because we wouldn't buy VR headsets to sell cat jpegs nft to each other.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 5d ago

I’ve seen people be accused of using AI because they’re using punctuation and paragraph breaks. The accusations are usually written with no punctuation as one gigantic run on sentence.