What the Em Dash Says About AI-assisted Writing—And Us

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A few Fridays ago, there was an awkward silence at Every’s editorial meeting.

Six floating heads of writers and editors on Zoom blinked at each other, petrified by a punctuation mark—the em dash.

ChatGPT loooves the em dash—arguably, a bit too much—to the point that it’s become a tell-tale sign of AI-generated writing. (See what I did there?) On the call, we worried—should we avoid using it because it makes our writing sound like AI?

This could be dismissed as a bunch of writers being unduly precious, and maybe we were. But the reason we—and many human writers—are anxious about using em dashes has little to do with punctuation—it’s about trust. (OK, OK, I’ll stop.)

As you scroll down this page, I’m asking for yours: I’m gently taking your hand and inviting you into my thoughts. All the while, a crucial subtext is there saying, in effect: I thought about this, and I cared. You can trust that I did, even if you don’t agree with what I said.

And now a punctuation mark threatens that trust. What I fear most isn’t that my writing will be mistaken for AI, it’s that someone—my editors, fellow writers, or maybe even you—will assume that it didn’t come from a place of care.

AI is rapidly being adopted for its ability to help people accomplish a range of tasks, including writing, more quickly. An increasing number of business leaders now require it. Many writers, though, are facing backlash if their work contains signs of AI use. In some cases, they’re being fired for it. Readers are passing judgment on writing based on appearances, without actually engaging with it. And that’s a problem. (Factual inaccuracies in articles because the writer used AI are, of course, unacceptable.)

We’re living through a moment when the question of how something was made threatens to eclipse what it’s trying to say. Why are we so quick to judge writing based on superficial signs of AI? There has to be a better way to evaluate work that uses it. Instead of asking how something was made, perhaps we should ask whether it’s good—and how we might learn to tell.

Let’s dive in.

What the em dash debate tells us about ourselves