God Save the Em Dash from the AI Regime

Amongst the long list of things to hate about artificial intelligence (AI), from the unreliable information, to the lack of emotion and the utter attack on human communication, lies another unwelcome consequence — the demonization of the em dash.

AI has already started to steal our art, jobs and ability to write a decent essay. God forbid it takes the em dash too. 

Packing the punch of a beautifully placed comma and a much more satisfying flow than a colon, the em dash (—) is a curious little symbol unlike any other form of punctuation.

For those who love to write in fragments or emphasize a sarcastic point, the em dash is a god send — a single line which pushes forward an idea with purpose, power and personality. 

As an English and multimedia journalism student who was criticized for my excessive use of commas and sentence fragments while growing up, the day I discovered the em dash was the one of the best of my life. Mostly because it was also the day I first read one on the opening page of “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak, which would become my favorite book and style inspiration. And if Zusak could use the hell out of an em dash, then why shouldn’t I? 

“Does this worry you?” Zusak writes on page one. “I urge you — don’t be afraid. I’m nothing if not fair.” 

I use em dashes so much I have my settings changed on my laptop and phone to automatically replace a normal, boring hyphen with one. There’s nothing I hate more than writing that’s voiceless, expressionless and opinionless. 

There’s nothing voiceless about an em dash. 

So imagine my surprise — and befuddlement — when the beloved em dash started getting flagged as a sign of AI, as if a machine could ever understand the weight a symbol could hold. 

The attack began when ChatGPT users started noticing a pattern of em dashes in responses. Since we live in a digital world, the phenomena of the “ChatGPT hyphen” quickly became a topic of online debate, from journalists defending the symbol with their lives to cheaters wiping evidence of it from their stolen essays so as not to get caught. 

I stayed out of it at first. I didn’t believe AI, which sounds as emotionless and nonchalant as the performative male population at Loyola, could ever pose a serious threat to human writing, which is laced with depth and feeling. 

And then my roommate sat at our kitchen counter the other day asking me if my papers and their abundance of em dashes had ever gotten flagged by an plagiarism detection service as AI — because her perfectly authentic paper just had. 

The em dash suspicion reflects our paranoia over work being seen as AI, according to Rolling Stone. Plagiarism is a serious accusation in academics, journalism and writing. It makes sense why hardworking students and respectable writers would want to protect their credibility. 

But we cannot seriously consider giving AI the power to patrol writing styles, to claim a punctuation mark which has been used for centuries and to impact the stories we have to tell and how we judge those of others. 

Writing is a part of being human, and for many, em dashes are part of writing. 

The prominence of ChatGPT, the reason this conversation is even happening in the first place, is the real problem — not the em dash. It’s concerning how society has given power to a machine, letting it not only regulate access to knowledge, but how that knowledge is expressed. 

Em dashes aren’t just lines or extended hyphens or forms of punctuation. They’re a way to prove a statement, emphasize a voice and leave a personal mark on a story — one a machine could never make. 

So, for the love of God, don’t let AI take the em dash, or next it may want the commas, colons and words.