Punctuation has become the surest way to tell the difference between thought and algorithm, and the em-dash is its clearest tell
In these languid, self-care times, the em-dash has become the new ellipsis, which is like saying avocado toast has replaced the Caesar salad. Not an improvement, only a different way of being insufferable.
When I became an editor too young and too sure of myself, I treated the ellipsis as the nicotine stain of prose. Submissions came to me typewritten and triple-spaced, sometimes faxed, often scrawled with desperate marginal notes. The writers hid behind their bylines, but the ellipsis betrayed them. Three dots, and I knew they were old, tired, and reaching for the literary equivalent of a walker.
I had no patience for it. I hardly used it myself. If it showed up in a draft I was editing, I erased it in favour of the period, which at least had the decency to end things. The ellipsis was cowardice disguised as punctuation, a way of mumbling on paper.
It had its use, of course, when hacking chunks out of a quotation. But in manuscripts, it was the calling card of the lazy. Too lazy to finish the thought, too lazy to connect one sentence to the next, too lazy to earn a transition, they resort to this crutch, a prop, a kind of typographic Botox.
The ellipsis has been replaced by the em-dash, the punctuation of writers who cannot even be bothered to be lazy on their own. They outsource the job to artificial intelligence, which obligingly serves up drafts in which the em-dash struts across the page like a toddler in a superhero cape.
The em-dash is the ultimate AI fingerprint. Where once bad writers reached for the thesaurus and produced pulchritudinous, the machine now reaches for the dash and produces copy that sounds suspiciously like this: “It isn’t just omakase—it’s a meditative art form.” “It’s not just brunch—it’s a Saturday morning ritual at the Shangri-La the Fort.” “This isn’t merely a wine list—it’s a journey through the Old World.” The AI loves nothing more than turning the dash into a pivot point, a hinge on which clichés swing like rusty doors.
The em dash—longer than a hyphen and more dramatic than a comma—can add emphasis, indicate a pause, or set off additional information in a sentence (Illustration: Syrah Inocencio)
1 / 1
Scroll through Instagram captions and you will see the contagion. “It’s not just Pilates—it’s a movement towards mindful living.” “Not your usual fashion show—it’s a runway revolution.” Even government press releases have caught the bug. “This is not a tax increase—it is a social investment.” If you squint, you can almost hear the chatbot whispering behind the bureaucrat.
The dash has become the duct tape of digital prose. It patches holes, bridges gaps, creates rhythm where none exists. It lets a writer dodge the difficult choices between a comma, a colon or a period. Why bother with grammar when one horizontal line can connect anything to anything, from the Art Fair to the latest IPO, or even a boardroom takeover to the unveiling of an expanded Patek Philippe in Bangkok?
The em-dash is, of course, not entirely a fraud. It has its legitimate uses, when it sets off parenthetical clauses, when it steps in as a more emphatic comma, or when it parades in as a substitute for a colon. Properly handled, it adds rhythm, surprise, even a touch of drama. What AI does, however, is use it not for effect but for survival, plugging it in wherever thought should be doing the work.
Read more: What is AI slop? How to spot and avoid low-quality AI content
It would be unfair to pretend human writers are innocent. Long before ChatGPT, there were columnists and bloggers who leaned on the dash as if it were a cane, hobbling through sentences that should have walked on their own. What AI has done is to amplify this tendency, turning an occasional crutch into a preset. Where the human hand might still hesitate or revise, the algorithm ploughs ahead, stringing dashes like rosary beads.
I once admired the em-dash. Sparingly used, it was a blade, abrupt and clean. I first noticed its power in Star Wars: A New Hope, when Darth Vader said, “I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since—”. Search for the quote online and you’ll find it ends with an ellipsis, limp and trailing. But in the novelised version I owned, it ended with the dash, a single stroke that carried the menace of the whole empire.
