June 8, 2026
Consider the Em Dash
A.I. inspires a new level of scrutiny in media use. We read articles or social posts on high alert for generative writing—but no stylistic choice bears the brunt of accusation like the em dash. What is the significance of this little line? And why have we tied it to a chair?
Reintroduction
The em dash, with roots in the 15th century, is beloved by age-old poets and modern writers alike. It’s a Swiss army knife, replacing colons, commas, and parentheses with no mercy—but it accomplishes much more than that. The em dash allows the writer—and the reader—to pause, journey elsewhere, and return home in the same breath. It captures attention in a way few other punctuation marks can.
Punctuating in the New Age
A.I. has commandeered the em dash. Ironically, the punctuation known for meandering is paraded by the ultimate efficiency tool. It appears in nearly every generated response. As we learned to recognize signs of A.I., we ostracized the em dash—and writers aren’t happy about it. Those who love the em dash can either risk A.I. accusations or raise a white flag to the semicolon.
This begs the question: If it’s such a point of contention, why not remove them from responses altogether? Given that language learning models have trained on thousands of years of source material, a working theory is that em dashes are too ingrained in their knowledge to be wiped out. Marketer Brent Csutoras demonstrates this in “The Em Dash Dilemma,” where he attempts to eliminate recognizable A.I. patterns. “No matter what settings, prompts, warnings, or threats I tried, A.I. just could not, or would not, quit it… It’s like asking a bird not to chirp.”
The Pushback
We’ve done the A.I. witch hunt—now, we’re looking to distinguish the human word. Social media users defend the em dash with spirit, brandishing the leaps, stutters, and circle-backs of conversational writing. “Use the em dash—and maybe the semicolon too; you’re ungovernable…” says Twitter user @exitsenses.
As we walk the field of efficiency—with emails and reports aplenty—consider stopping to smell the grammatical roses. And if you’re mistaken for a robot, employ this sign-off, free of charge:
Use of em dashes are entirely my own—here’s one for the road! #emdashon