LISTEN IN: AI voices debate this article.
Almost every day, on LinkedIn, there is a post about how em dashes are a dead giveaway of AI-generated text.
The digital chorus is hard to ignore because it is loud. It is even forcing some writers to use hyphens in place of em dashes—which is surprising because the two punctuation marks have totally different functions.
Another surprise is LinkedIn users who say that they have been writers for many years, but they did not know anything about em and en dashes until AI started using them liberally. That is a bit like saying you are a frequent flyer but you have never heard of boarding passes.
Of course, it is true that many posts with em dashes that appear on LinkedIn and other social media platforms are written by AI. Many people who do not read widely and have no strong writing background would not use em dashes.
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But people with a strong writing background have used em dashes for decades. These include academics, journalists, researchers and writers. When you see em dashes in a piece of writing and you want to conclude it is AI-generated, it would be wise to check and see who is behind the writing.
This piece is not arguing that writers who use em dashes are necessarily great writers. But if someone has used em dashes for many years, chances are that they are familiar with high-quality writing.
Here is why. Nearly all world-class publications that use em dashes are well known for high-quality writing. Some of those publications are the Economist, the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times. Even broadcasters, such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and NPR, use em dashes.
As the Merriam Webster dictionary once noted, the em dash is famous for its panache. No other punctuation mark comes closer.
You can use it in place of commas or parentheses to emphasise or draw attention to parenthetical or amplifying material. You can use it to set off or introduce defining phrases and lists, as the screenshot below shows.
Writers who use em dashes demonstrate a sophisticated grasp of rhythm, emphasis and parenthetical thought. The em dash also shows they know how to interrupt themselves to define or emphasise something. These screenshots hammer this point home.
Used correctly, the em dash almost always points to high-skill punctuation, and you cannot have high-quality writing with poor punctuation.
The criticism thrown at the em dash tends to lose sight of one important fact: AI is trained on texts that are well written, and well-written texts often contain em dashes. In other words, AI is using the em dash because humans who have written for decades have used the em dash to communicate effectively in writing.
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By inference, you can argue—quite plausibly—that any writer who has used the em dash correctly for decades is displaying writing skills that are generally of high standards.
One thing that is completely lost on many people criticising the em dash is how it has the capacity to guide those hiring skilled writers.
How? Em dashes in articles published many years before large language models existed, especially if used correctly, point to long exposure to high-quality prose. They do not necessarily mean strong writing skills, but they paint a picture of what someone can do as a writer.
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