Ever since ChatGPT came out, everyone’s become allergic to the em dash ( “—”) a punctuation mark that was once the breath of Emily Dickinson and now the most triggering sign of AI writing.

Ruben Hassid just dropped a guide on how to train ChatGPT to actually write like you, and it's brilliant.Even if you love em-dashes, having them in your writing screams "AI wrote this” unfortunately.

This is a problem our team is desperate to solve. The fix? Don't just tell ChatGPT to stop using them. Give it an alternative.

Add this to your Custom Instructions (bottom left menu → Personalization → Custom Instructions):

“Systematically replace em-dashes (“—”) with a period (“.”) to start a new sentence, or a comma (“,”) to continue the sentence.”

Why this works: You're teaching ChatGPT what to use instead. Simple prompts like “stop using em-dashes” fail because the AI needs concrete alternatives. It’s the toddler problem we talked about on Tuesday… don’t tell AI what NOT to do, tell it what TO DO instead.

The key insight: To make AI write like, don’t try to find a one-shot perfect prompt. Train it through Custom Instructions to replace AI patterns with your patterns. Think of it as teaching AI your writing dialect, one tic at a time." (The Neuron - theneuron at newsletter.theneurondaily.com, 😸 Hospital Charged $195K. Claude Found the Lies.)