Y Combinator applications grew 60% longer, and 'wedge' now appears in 20% of them

YC applications have grown 60% in length over three years, YC partners noted. The word "wedge" has risen from under 1% of applications in spring 2025 to over 20% by the summer 2026 batch. Em dashes crossed 50% of applications by summer 2025. YC's CEO has defended using AI to write. The data is an unusually clean natural experiment in how fast LLM prose conventions colonize a high-stakes writing genre.

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