The em dash vs the internet
A clearcut sign people don’t read enough
The em dash — this little punctuation mark here, which mimics the cadence of real thoughts and adds tempo to sentence structure — has been the source of much controversy lately.
For me, the em dash is a writer’s best friend. It’s flexible, it’s easy to use (who even understands the rules to use a semicolon correctly?), and it feels right. You can just vibe with em dash, you know?
But to a large swath of the internet, it is a clearcut sign of AI-generated writing.
This argument is obviously bereft of any intellectual rigor. Many have explained why em dashes are not a telltale sign of AI writing, and I’d like to add my voice to the chorus of em dash defenders.
Professionally, I work in communications. I don’t know that I’d consider myself a writer writer, but I do write. I write essays here on Substack and I’ve written countless more words on behalf of CEOs, founders, and other executives I’ve worked with for the better part of a decade.
I do not use AI to produce external copy.1
However, I have been told multiple times, either directly or through a third party, that my predilection towards em dashes is obviously a sign of AI writing and I should stop using them.
To them I say simply: No.
Truthfully, despite the frothing hatred that burns like a thousand suns within me at the mere suggestion that em dashes are the progeny of AI, I’ll try to be measured and unpack why this line of thinking is incorrect.
Let’s start simply: The best case scenario for people who see em dashes and think, “Oh, AI obviously wrote that,” is they’ve never read good writing before. Kurt Vonnegut, Edgar Allen Poe, my nihilist GOAT Friedrich Nietzsche2, and many other great writers have used the em dash. Emily Dickinson was so fond of them that they are sometimes known as Dickinson’s Dashes. For those counting at home, Dickinson was writing about 160 years before the release of ChatGPT, so we can be reasonably confident that she didn’t use AI when she penned Because I could not stop for Death.
The worst case scenario, which is far more frightening, is that there are genuinely learned people who think that identifying AI-generated writing is as simple as seeing an em dash. This line of thinking is intellectual infantilism. It’s hauntingly imprecise. It’s so surface-level. It’s so blatantly wrong precisely because the em dash is an extremely popular piece of punctuation.
My blood pressure is rising just thinking about it.
One piece of punctuation being firmly indicative of AI writing implies that the piece of punctuation in question must have never — or at least, exceedingly rarely — been used by people without AI. If it was used by people readily, after all, its mere existence could not — definitionally — be seen as a clear-cut indication of AI writing.
We know — we KNOW!!! — that people have been using em dashes for two hundred fucking years. So how in the world could it possibly be a clear sign of AI writing?
Dear reader, it can’t.
And I know, I know — AI uses em dashes. Wanna know why? AI is trained on human writing that uses a lot of em dashes. ChatGPT has read the whole internet. Until recently, stuff on the internet was written by people. Therefore, ChatGPT learned, in both substance and style, from human writing. That included a lot of em dashes.
Rest assured, ChatGPT didn’t independently decide to use em dashes (it can’t decide anything because it can’t think for itself).
If ChatGPT was only trained on Herman Melville, every sentence would read like a run on. If it was trained on Hemmingway, it would hardly ever use compound sentences. If it was trained on Shakespeare, we’d all be confused.
And yet, despite the stupidity of all of this, the use-of-an-em-dash-as-sign-of-AI-writing is still a thing. I guess if someone out there thinks that em dashes are a clear sign of AI writing, fine. People are allowed to have opinions, even if there is no factual or intellectual or logical basis to them at all, in any way, shape, or form. It’s fine.3,4
As for me?
You’ll have to pry the em dash from my cold, dead hands.
I do use it to do research and help poke holes in things I’ve written, but I don’t ask AI to write something for me. Low key, I think it’s not a very good writer.
I won’t sit here and pretend these are a steady part of my media diet — I mostly read adult and YA fantasy and sci-fi. But I’ve read the classics, and I know em dashes aren’t new.
It is fine, right?
Or it’s a harbinger of the brain rot that affects even the intellectual elite and we’ll soon all be rendered mindless dopes lest we engage in a Butlerian Jihad against AI.
I'll admit - I was one of the people who questioned the em dash. I'm over the age of 40, and this year was the first time I heard the term "em dash" - specifically in the context of identifying AI written content.
For context, I grew up in another country (the one that invented the language), and during schooling we adhered to strict grammar and punctuation. Literal rulers were not applied to knuckles but it was the verbal equivalent.
I was told that using a "dash" was considered lazy when forming a sentence. But I do it today because it's convenient, and no grown ups are going to chastise me.
It is still alien and weird to me that you combine two dashes together -- but I guess languages evolve, and who am I to correct American english?
The real tell tale for AI is flawless writing, interspersed with emojis, followed by a summary that showers you in praise for the prescient observations that seem like they make sense, but if you scratch beneath the surface might have some glaring inconsistencies.
Or perhaps I just don't read enough.