Reclaiming the EM Dash: Don't Be Punctuated by AI

(This article is adapted from a video essay by The Unenlightened Generalists. You can watch the original at youtu.be/zCX8lDvNMoY.)

As a teacher who is currently working as a proofreader, I believe we need to reclaim the EM dash from AI stigma. I am also a writer and I love to use the Em dash, so I feel personally incised by the way people are abandoning what may be our most dynamic and perhaps most expressive punctuation mark to the realm of AI.

In this essay, I'm going to discuss what the EM dash is, why it's considered an AI hallmark, and most importantly why we need to expand rather than limit our modes of expression to highlight our humanity in the age of AI.

What Is the EM Dash?

The longest horizontal dash—called the EM dash—got its name with the advent of the 15th century printing press, when it was standardized to be the same width as a capital letter M, unlike the N dash, which is half as wide.

But the EM dash goes back much further in our human history. For example, horizontal dashes were used in medieval manuscripts, serving a number of purposes, including indicating interruptions or omitted content, separating sections, and signaling dialogue.

But even as the EM dash entered the era of standardization and industrialization, this punctuation mark has never been limited to a fixed purpose, but has remained incredibly flexible and open-ended—which, in my opinion, makes it the most humanizing punctuation mark.

The EM dash is a flexible way to make writing more natural—more like actual human thought or speech—because it basically allows for run-on sentences and interruptions that mimic our everyday, conversational use of language.

Functionally, the EM dash can replace a comma, a colon, a set of parentheses, or a semicolon. Today we use the EM dash to add emphasis, indicate a side thought, illustrate a run-on train of thought, or represent fragmented speech. And what this basically means is that the EM dash gives us license to break the rules.

Want to smash two sentences or a string of ideas together the way you would if you were talking to a friend? The EM dash is there to help. Want to interject your inner thoughts about something, like an actor turning to the audience and breaking the 4th wall? The EM dash has got your back. Want to ramble on your soapbox for a moment mid-sentence? The EM dash can make it happen.

And interestingly, the EM dash became essential in playscripts for capturing a theatrical technique called aposiopesis, speech deliberately broken off mid-sentence. And this is what happens in real life: we interrupt ourselves and each other, we monologue, and we make side comments.

In short, the EM dash is an easy and versatile way to put a little more organic humanity, drama, and authenticity into the written word, complete with winding trains of thought, sudden changes, and interruptions.

For these reasons, the EM dash was a favorite of classic novelists expressing the human spirit through the written word.

Famous authors in classic literature—from Charles Dickens and Herman Melville to Charlotte Brontë and Emily Dickinson—heavily relied on the EM dash, popularizing this symbol as a way to translate the dynamic nature of human thought and human experience into text.

When used with human discretion, the EM dash gives us the flexibility to focus on what language sounds like and feels like without being overly bound to the standardized rules of grammar.

Why AI Clung to the EM Dash

So, why has Artificial Intelligence so eagerly glommed onto the EM dash? For two reasons. One, AI likes the EM dash because people like the EM dash, and most AI models are intentionally designed to mimic us and please us.

Also, newer generations of Large Language Models, including Claude and Gemini, were heavily trained on classic literature like Dickens, reinforcing the EM dash habit. And the second reason is simply that AI is reasonably smart, and so it can identify the EM dash as an effective and efficient punctuation mark to communicate clearly.

The EM dash is easy—it's versatile—it's an easy way to avoid making mistakes with more standardized punctuation, as many AI models often do.

Essentially, AI glommed onto the EM dash as an easy way to mimic humanity. And this is why the EM dash became an AI hallmark, because many AI models have overused it.

This reminds me of why, as an elementary school teacher, I did not teach the EM dash to my students at the ages of 9, 10, or 11. Before introducing the EM dash, I wanted them to master the more difficult punctuation marks, especially the comma, which we were still mastering about in fifth grade, and which most adults have not mastered. If we jump ahead to the EM dash without mastering standard punctuation, we can take the lazy route and just plug it in everywhere—because it's easy. Which is exactly what has happened with AI.

Writing starts to look strange with too many EM dashes, so it's important to follow reasonable guidelines like not using more than two EM dashes in a sentence, and not using EM dashes in too many sentences in a row.

These are guidelines AI has been known to break because AI lacks the aesthetic sensibilities of humans, and it also lacks the experience of grueling years learning the nuances of the comma in elementary and middle school.

The Real Problem

But what really gets me is that we are labeling the EM dash as AI when all the AI is doing is trying to mimic the humanity of the EM dash. And now many people are abandoning this symbol altogether for fear of looking like the AI that is trying to copy humans.

People have become downright fearful of the EM dash, and it has been hastily removed from countless resumes, articles, marketing materials, and websites over the last year.

And this is just wild to me, because if we stop doing something because of AI, then we are allowing ourselves to be defined by AI—we are allowing our expression to be limited by a derivative human creation. Why should real people change what we're doing just because a robot is copying us poorly in an effort to sound like a real boy?

And of course, it's just plain lazy to flag the EM dash as an instant AI tell. Anyone can easily ask ChatGPT to write their resume or essay and then just ask it to remove all the EM dashes.

But what's more, in the age of AI, we shouldn't try to differentiate ourselves from AI by further limiting our expression and creativity—we need to do exactly the opposite—we need to double down on our creativity.

How can you make sure your resume looks original? By writing at least part of it yourself, by including stories from your life and your unique connections to ideas and experiences that would be highly unlikely to come out of AIs—engines that are essentially designed as probability models that intentionally strive to be average and fit the status quo.

The EM dash can help us to be more creative, and in fact so could AI, if used to augment rather than replace our humanity. Through artificial intelligence, we gain ways to access, synthesize, and interrelate ideas more easily than ever.

But the problem with AI, beyond its devastating environmental effect, which is way worse than it should be if only businesses were held accountable in terms of energy production … the other problem is that people are accepting and regurgitating content from AI without activating their critical thinking or creativity—without contextualizing information in our real life experience and real life relationships.

Another core issue in this situation is that too many teachers and recruiters have been asking students and potential hires to sound like robots for decades now. The essays that get the A and the resumes that get the job are often not the ones that demonstrate the most creativity or take the most risks.

When we are asking people to reduce themselves to meet a preset, standardized set of expectations, we are asking them to be like robots, and so it's no surprise that students and job applicants are asking AI to do that grunt work.

It's exactly the kind of standardized, formulaic writing that AI is getting better and better at producing. And of course, employers and even some teachers are then asking AI to assess the material submitted in a really wild feedback loop where everything is a facsimile of humanity.

What we need to do is raise the bar from standardization to creation. Rather than trying to fulfill standards and "meet the brief," we need to write in order to create something new—something that has never existed before—something that expresses our unique human creativity.

In the age of AI, we can and should write to share what makes us human—our lived experiences and our connections with real human beings.

And I think the EM dash is a perfect tool for that purpose. When we write something that breaks out of the status quo, this dynamic symbol allows us to rise above the standardization of grammar rules to bring in some unpredictability and even some poetic sensibility into our writing. The EM dash helps our writing to take shape not based on standardization, but based on expression. And we need that today more than ever.

Don't Abandon the EM Dash—Abandon Robotic Writing

I encourage you not to abandon the EM dash, but rather to embrace it. To allow the EM dash to help you find your authentic voice in writing.

Rather, let's abandon the type of writing that asks humans to become robots because, yes, the AI can probably do that better than us anyway—it's an actual robot. But if we become creative—if we use our writing to connect and innovate rather than to fit in—then we are truly irreplaceable.