A question to consider about people who think em-dash use in a text means that an AI machine wrote the text:
Do such people even read much? Do they read much offline or read texts or books that were originally published offline or published years or decades ago or longer?
Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves tells us that the dash – I don't think she calls it the em-dash – is her favorite punctuation mark, because of its flexibility of use.
This is awful. I had to hold back on my writing skills in my final dissertation because I didn't want examiners to think I used AI. I can't believe I'm afraid to write properly.
Well before people equated em-dashes with AI – indeed, before AI was even a thing – I equated the em-dash with American writing. It seems to me that in the US, writers use the em-dash (without spaces) where a British writer would use an en-dash (with a space at both ends). Thoughts?
As a person in technical fields, the vocabulary and even writing style in this article were a breath of fresh air. Words and expressions I forgot since I stopped reading classical literature, and my brain was really happy for it.
Fun fact, as I’m not a native English speaker, I can confirm: the dogs indeed “latră” in my native tongue (Romanian).
I recently got back on Hinge, and 3 people asked me if I was real because my english sounded AI like, I was offended haha
I think it's because it's not my first language, so I think more about what words to use, but it made me self-concious. I have never used AI in my life and it scares me to think people believed I did, so I understand that "panick"
Somehow I hadn't heard of em dashes until it became known as an LLM trope. I use lots of en dashes though, but I call them hyphens. Guess I need to review my English knowledge. Now I want to use more cool obscure words.
The inkhorn parallel is instructive, but there's an even older one worth considering: the alphabet itself. Plato's Socrates complained that writing would destroy memory, turn philosophers into passive consumers of knowledge instead of active knowers. Writing was the AI of its day: a technology that mimicked human thought without truly understanding it.
What's changed is the speed. The inkhorn controversy took decades to resolve. The em-dash panic is playing out in months. McLuhan called this "technological fallout," the way each new medium generates a wave of anxiety before we figure out how to live with it. Print worried us about Latin; typewriters worried us about penmanship; AI worries us about punctuation.
The deeper issue you're pointing at: we've outsourced our sense of authenticity to surface markers. Instead of reading for content, we scan for tells. Instead of judging an argument, we run it through an AI detector. This is a literacy failure dressed up as vigilance.
What Dickinson and Sterne understood is that punctuation is breath. The dash marks where the voice would pause, where the mind would hesitate. AI uses dashes because the training data is full of dashes. Humans use dashes because thinking is halting. These are not the same phenomenon, but you can't tell the difference by counting punctuation marks.
I think that for everyone who writes this has been a horrendous experience. I also thought about not using them, but then that would lead to worse writing, so no. Long-live the em-dash and the full use of punctuation.
As a journalist, I was taught to avoid dashes of any kind. They fell into the category of exclamation marks. As one of my beloved professors once said, we all should receive only 4 exclamation marks at birth, each eventually used with thoughtful reason because there would never be more available in a lifetime.
For some reason my writing often calls for em-dashes. I do not write professionally. I find AI annoying and appreciate it only as a spell-check. It's "suggestions" never sound like me and I would never use them.
That's enlightening. I'd wondered why I find AI writing so annoying: I'd attributed the lack of originality, perhaps, rather than any particular stylistic tic. But of course it's the massive overuse of such tics regardless of the text, trapping out the banal with massively grandiose phrases.
Especially on sites like LinkedIn where it seems to be more common than spellcheck.
As a long-term user of the em-dash, yes, I’ve been adding my thoughts in brackets more to avoid being accused of using AI. It’s infuriating and, I suspect, yet another symptom of the ‘endumbening’ of society! Grrrr!
(Back to reading the rest of your article, but I *had* to vent!)
A question to consider about people who think em-dash use in a text means that an AI machine wrote the text:
Do such people even read much? Do they read much offline or read texts or books that were originally published offline or published years or decades ago or longer?
Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves tells us that the dash – I don't think she calls it the em-dash – is her favorite punctuation mark, because of its flexibility of use.
This is awful. I had to hold back on my writing skills in my final dissertation because I didn't want examiners to think I used AI. I can't believe I'm afraid to write properly.
Well before people equated em-dashes with AI – indeed, before AI was even a thing – I equated the em-dash with American writing. It seems to me that in the US, writers use the em-dash (without spaces) where a British writer would use an en-dash (with a space at both ends). Thoughts?
You can take my em dashes from my cold, dead — and, quite likely, clammy — hands.
As a person in technical fields, the vocabulary and even writing style in this article were a breath of fresh air. Words and expressions I forgot since I stopped reading classical literature, and my brain was really happy for it.
Fun fact, as I’m not a native English speaker, I can confirm: the dogs indeed “latră” in my native tongue (Romanian).
Super interesting read.
I recently got back on Hinge, and 3 people asked me if I was real because my english sounded AI like, I was offended haha
I think it's because it's not my first language, so I think more about what words to use, but it made me self-concious. I have never used AI in my life and it scares me to think people believed I did, so I understand that "panick"
Or it could just be that you are writing intelligently, and they aren’t used to seeing it!
Somehow I hadn't heard of em dashes until it became known as an LLM trope. I use lots of en dashes though, but I call them hyphens. Guess I need to review my English knowledge. Now I want to use more cool obscure words.
Great article! I use(d) em-dashes quite often in my writing, but lately I've also been wary of them specifically for this reason.
Yes let's dash everywhere like a Dadaist maniac. Love this article. Love the attitude. BTW nice prose style as well. 😎
The inkhorn parallel is instructive, but there's an even older one worth considering: the alphabet itself. Plato's Socrates complained that writing would destroy memory, turn philosophers into passive consumers of knowledge instead of active knowers. Writing was the AI of its day: a technology that mimicked human thought without truly understanding it.
What's changed is the speed. The inkhorn controversy took decades to resolve. The em-dash panic is playing out in months. McLuhan called this "technological fallout," the way each new medium generates a wave of anxiety before we figure out how to live with it. Print worried us about Latin; typewriters worried us about penmanship; AI worries us about punctuation.
The deeper issue you're pointing at: we've outsourced our sense of authenticity to surface markers. Instead of reading for content, we scan for tells. Instead of judging an argument, we run it through an AI detector. This is a literacy failure dressed up as vigilance.
What Dickinson and Sterne understood is that punctuation is breath. The dash marks where the voice would pause, where the mind would hesitate. AI uses dashes because the training data is full of dashes. Humans use dashes because thinking is halting. These are not the same phenomenon, but you can't tell the difference by counting punctuation marks.
I think that for everyone who writes this has been a horrendous experience. I also thought about not using them, but then that would lead to worse writing, so no. Long-live the em-dash and the full use of punctuation.
As a journalist, I was taught to avoid dashes of any kind. They fell into the category of exclamation marks. As one of my beloved professors once said, we all should receive only 4 exclamation marks at birth, each eventually used with thoughtful reason because there would never be more available in a lifetime.
For some reason my writing often calls for em-dashes. I do not write professionally. I find AI annoying and appreciate it only as a spell-check. It's "suggestions" never sound like me and I would never use them.
That's enlightening. I'd wondered why I find AI writing so annoying: I'd attributed the lack of originality, perhaps, rather than any particular stylistic tic. But of course it's the massive overuse of such tics regardless of the text, trapping out the banal with massively grandiose phrases.
Especially on sites like LinkedIn where it seems to be more common than spellcheck.
As a long-term user of the em-dash, yes, I’ve been adding my thoughts in brackets more to avoid being accused of using AI. It’s infuriating and, I suspect, yet another symptom of the ‘endumbening’ of society! Grrrr!
(Back to reading the rest of your article, but I *had* to vent!)