I’m using em dashes—but I’m not an AI

Please don’t make the em dash—the long hyphen I’m using here—an indicator of AI-written text. I recently saw a post on LinkedIn (it pains me to admit it) where someone wrote a script to hide all comments containing an em dash because they’re highly likely to be AI-generated. I think there’s truth to it. But I also hate the fact that I think there’s truth to it.

For a long time, I used en dashes – the shorter version of the em dash. I always used it with a space, then the en dash, then a space. I liked how it structured sentences visually and caused me to read them with a small pause. I think it looks much nicer than parentheses (which always make me feel like I’m doing maths) and I also think it structures sentences better than commas, especially when the sentence contains a list of comma-separated words.

I used en dashes until I saw a video by John Green where he explained that I had been using them incorrectly all this time. The correct usage is an em dash—you don’t even need to add spaces, although you can.

You can use an en dash for ranges, such as 2–3pm. You can also use an en dash to reduce the ambiguity of a regular hyphen. In John Green’s example, it’s ‘New York–style pizza’ and not ‘New York-style pizza’. This makes it clear that it’s a style of pizza from New York, and not a new pizza in York-style. Or how Merriam-Webster defines it, “in compound adjectives when at least one of the elements is a two-word compound”.

However, you shouldn’t use the en dash as a replacement for a comma, semicolon or parentheses. For this, you use the em dash. —

So I started using the em dash more often as a result. And I looove using it. I still think it’s a great way to structure a sentence visually without cluttering it up, and it makes me pause when I read it.

However, more recently, I’ve noticed that I’ve been trying to avoid using the em dash. I’ve caught myself typing it and then removing it again to replace it with a comma. Simply because I noticed that AI uses em dashes a lot, and I’m afraid people will think my text is AI-generated, even though I’m not.

Is this the slow death of em dashes?

I think I’ll just embrace them and use them whenever I want. Maybe I’ll sometimes surround them with spaces, which AI doesn’t seem to do. Maybe I’ll use them more than necessary to shove them into people’s faces. Perhaps people will think my text is AI-generated, but then again, maybe I’ll just write it so badly that no AI could produce such rubbish.

AI might take my job, but it won’t take my em dashes away!