RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Nature of RFC 454545

  • Many interpret it as a joke/April Fools–style RFC, similar to the “evil bit” RFC.
  • The number (454545) is beyond the current RFC range, reinforcing that it’s not a real standards-track document.
  • Some readers initially took it seriously, only later realizing the gag (e.g., “454545” → “---”).

AI Detection and “Human Em Dash” / HAM

  • Proposal: new Unicode marks (Human Em Dash / Human Attestation Mark) that editors insert when a human types an em dash, supposedly signaling human authorship.
  • Skeptics note nothing prevents LLMs from emitting or mimicking these characters, or systems from stripping them, making it a weak or temporary signal.
  • Compared to serious Unicode AI-watermark proposals (e.g., zero-width characters), but those face the same cat‑and‑mouse and tooling problems.
  • Some suggest such schemes would require AI vendors’ cooperation anyway, so the same could be done without changing how humans write.

Em Dash as an AI “Tell”

  • Discussion of an “em dash leaderboard” showing many heavy em‑dash users before ChatGPT, undermining “em dash = AI” claims.
  • Consensus: em-dash frequency is at most a very weak indicator, easily misused for witch-hunts.
  • Reports of humans (including students and employees) being falsely accused of using AI solely due to em-dash-heavy prose.

Punctuation Style Debates

  • Long subthread on em dash vs en dash vs semicolon vs comma vs parentheses:
    • Some call the em dash lazy, overused, or ambiguous; prefer semicolons, commas, or parentheses.
    • Others defend it as a flexible device for asides, tangents, and flow, widely used in quality writing (including legal texts).
    • Acknowledgment that different style guides and regions (e.g., spaced en dash in British usage) make rigid rules unrealistic.

Social, Cultural, and Trust Issues

  • Concern that AI stigma is causing people to alter or “dumb down” their writing (adding typos, avoiding certain punctuation) to appear more human.
  • Pushback on attempts to pathologize em-dash usage (e.g., as a neurodivergence “tell”).
  • Several argue the real issue is the broken social contract around representing AI-assisted work, not punctuation.
  • Broader question raised: reliable “CAPTCHAs” for human text may be impossible; future solutions likely require identity/side-channel trust systems, not punctuation hacks.