Does the M dash have to go?
Have you ever wondered why AI seems to love the M dash so much more than we do? Is your writing being flagged as AI generated just because you use a little punctuation differently? In this episode I dig into the history of the M dash, how and why it gets overused by AI tools, and what it really says about your writing style. Should you start removing M dashes from your work to avoid being mistaken for a robot, or is there a better way to handle this common signal?
Listen to this new 8 minute episode for practical tips on punctuation, avoiding false AI flags, and understanding why people notice the M dash in your writing.
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
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View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/
Summary
In this episode I dive deep into the world of the em dash and its surprising connection to AI writing. I share my experiences with the growing conversation about AI-generated content and why some tools flag the em dash as a telltale sign of artificial authorship. I explore the true history behind the em dash, tracing it back to the days of typesetting when the length of the dash matched the width of the capital letter M. I explain how the em dash is properly used for emphasis, abrupt turns in thought, asides, and occasions where parentheses or colons might also work.
I discuss how the limitations of the typewriter era kept many of us from learning about or using the em dash extensively and how modern AI, trained on huge volumes of literature and formal style guides, tends to favor the em dash far more than human writers. I use insights from AI tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT to illustrate just how much more frequently AI employs this punctuation mark. I point out that while the presence of an em dash alone does not mean a passage was written by AI, an overuse can raise suspicions.
To avoid false positives and to keep my own writing human, I share practical strategies such as instructing AI to avoid em dashes or using find and replace to swap them out for more familiar punctuation. Even though the use of the em dash is legitimate, I recognize the reality that readers and editors may now associate it with AI writing, so I adapt my approach accordingly. Throughout the episode I highlight the importance of understanding both the origins and current perceptions of this punctuation mark, offering guidance for anyone who wants their writing to remain unmistakably human.
Does the em dash have to go? Listen to this episode. See what I’m talking about.
Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast.
I’ve been seeing a lot lately about AI slop, which is just bad stuff that’s being put out that’s coming from AI. But one of the things that people are using are these detectors that can say whether or not something was written by AI or not.
And one of the things that comes up all the time is the em dash, E-M. And I wanted to look up, so what’s the history of this? Because this is a legitimate part of writing, but why does AI use it more than we do in our writing?
So let’s go back to the beginning of it.
It’s a punctuation mark, like a comma, like a regular dash, like a semicolon. It’s a punctuation mark, but when and how it’s supposed to be used is what I think a lot of us don’t understand, including me.
So the history of it is that this dash is used as a part of speech where you might put a pause or you want to add emphasis.
But why is it called an em dash? E-M. And that actually goes back to way back when you would set type with individual letters. So if you remember from schooling or books, or from an old movie where you would see people that they actually had to set the type.
It’s why it’s called typesetting. And they would put the letters in one at a time to form the words and the sentences and the paragraphs.
They’d actually have to add spaces, blank ones for spaces and for paragraph lines and so forth.
And there is a regular dash that we’re familiar with, the short one that’s called an en dash, E-N. And then there’s the longer one called the em dash.
And if you think about the capital letter N and the capital letter M, the letter M is wider than the letter N, and an en dash is as wide as a capital letter N, and an em dash is as wide as a capital letter M.
So that’s literally where they got their name from.
So, the proper usage today, how are we supposed to use it? Right? If there’s an abrupt turn or an interruption in the thought, you would do it.
So I was asking Perplexity and I was asking ChatGPT for examples.
So here’s one from Perplexity. I was ready to sign the contract until I read the cancellation clause. In between contract and until, an em dash is a proper use of that, right?
A strong expansion or payoff. The real sales advantage is simple: speed. Now that’s another place for an em dash.
Now, could you use a colon there? Yes, you could. Could you put space dash space? Yes, you could. It’s not wrong.
This is what the em dash does. A deliberate aside where you’re saying something and then you’re saying something on the side of that, like you were talking to somebody else, or like you break the fourth wall in TV where they talk to the audience.
So here’s another one. Your prospect, especially a busy venue manager, doesn’t need more information. Well, that “especially a busy venue manager,” before and after that, an em dash would be another way of doing that.
So these are just some of the ways that you could be using it. Cutoff dialogue is another way for it, or things you might put in parentheses you could instead use with the em dash.
So something that changed it for a lot of people was the typewriter, because the typewriter doesn’t have an em dash.
It has a dash, it has an underline, it’s got slashes and all kinds of other things, but a regular typewriter doesn’t have an em dash.
So that would have kept it out of a lot of writing. And certainly when I learned how to type on a typewriter before computer keyboards, I wouldn’t have learned about an em dash.
It wasn’t something there. I don’t remember even being taught in school, in English class and in writing class, how to use an em dash. It just wasn’t something that was part of the lexicon.
But the thing with AI is that AI has been taught on years and years and hundreds of years worth of writing and writing styles, and probably given the style guides, you know, the Chicago Style Guide, the AP Style Guide, all these different style guides which are teaching the proper way to use all these different punctuation marks and things.
And that’s why it would use it more than we would, because it learned the rules probably a little bit better than we did.
So this training that it was given was told, okay, well, you don’t have to use parentheses here for this little thing, you could put an em dash. You’re making emphasis, you don’t have to put a colon, you could put that. You don’t have to put an ellipsis, dot dot dot, continuation of thought with it, you could use an em dash.
So it’s the instructions that it was given and the way it was taught, which are just different than most of us were taught.
So an em dash by itself doesn’t mean AI wrote it. It doesn’t.
But unfortunately, because AI uses it, I think, what did ChatGPT say? It was 3.2, one of them, one of the two of these said it was over three times more than real people do.
Here we go. This is from Perplexity. One analysis cited by McGill’s Office for Science and Society reported that GPT-4.1 used em dashes 3.28 times as often as human writers in standard essays.
So it’s not the em dash that signals it’s AI, it’s the amount of them that is being used.
So something you can do and something that I’ve done is in my instructions to AI, I will say, don’t use em dashes. Now I’ve put that into my global instructions, but it doesn’t always follow its global instructions.
Another thing you can do is simply a find and replace.
So right now I’ve edited a new version of Why Are They Ghosting Me? It’s gonna be a refreshed 2.0 edition.
And I went to my typesetter and I told him, I said, please remove any em dashes, just replace them with space dash space so it doesn’t have an em dash.
Even though it wasn’t written by AI, but when he’s typesetting and when I’ve done editing, it can replace what I’ve done with what it thinks are, I’m air quoting here, better grammar, what could be better grammar.
So that’s part of your challenge here, is it’s not that an em dash says you made it with AI. There is a proper usage of it.
But unfortunately, we come to think that, oh, because I didn’t see these before, right? I hardly ever saw them, never noticed them, never paid attention to them.
Now all of a sudden I should stop using them because you’re going to think AI wrote it.
And unfortunately, it’s probably the case for a lot of us, which is why I’m removing them, just to not have something to be a little signal, a false flag if you will, to say, hey, AI wrote this, when in reality AI might have only helped me fix my grammar.
Because I do use Grammarly and that has AI in it as well.
And there are times when it would say no, that’s not a semicolon, or that’s not a colon, that’s an em dash, and I have to ignore that.
And if I miss that, it might have changed some of those. That’s why I asked my typesetter, just go and try to remove any of them that are in there if any of them got stuck in there.
So, if you didn’t know why it was called an em dash, now you know why it was called an em dash. It’s literally the size of a letter M. That’s why we call it an em dash.
But you know, we don’t think about letters that way. But if you think about it, a capital letter M takes up a lot more room than a capital letter N, and that’s why they’re called em dashes and en dashes.
Hope that gave you something to think about, and maybe you’ll go and find and replace or give instructions and tell your AI, stop using em dashes.
Thanks for listening.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected] or you can text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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Question
Does using an em dash mean my writing was created by AI?
Tags:
#AIwriting #punctuation #writingmistakes
Answer
Just seeing an em dash doesn’t prove AI wrote your content. The real giveaway is how often it’s used. AI tends to load up on em dashes way more than most people do—sometimes over three times as much. If you want your writing to feel more natural, check how often those dashes pop up.
Takeaway: It’s frequency, not presence, that makes your writing look like AI.
Question
Why does AI use em dashes more than most humans do?
Tags:
#AIwriting #writingstyle
Answer
AI has been trained on a ton of style guides and classic writing. It learned all the proper uses for punctuation, including em dashes, often applying them more strictly than most people ever would. That’s why AI drops in em dashes so frequently, even when the average writer wouldn’t.
Takeaway: AI loves following grammar rules—even more than most people.
Question
Can I stop AI from using em dashes in my content?
Tags:
#AIwriting #contentediting #writingtools
Answer
You can tell your AI to avoid em dashes in your instructions, but it might not listen every time. What works best for me is to do a simple find and replace for em dashes before publishing. That way, you’re not handing AI an easy tipoff.
Takeaway: Use find and replace to clean up unwanted em dashes.
Question
What’s the proper way to use an em dash in writing?
Tags:
#writingtips #punctuation
Answer
An em dash is for abrupt turns, interruptions, or adding emphasis—kind of like a strong pause in speech. You could also use parentheses or a colon, but the em dash gives extra punch where needed.
Takeaway: Em dashes are for dramatic pauses and emphasis.
Question
Why do people think em dashes are a sign of AI writing?
Tags:
#AIwriting #perception #contentediting
Answer
People are noticing more em dashes now because AI uses them much more than typical writers. That extra frequency makes readers suspicious, even though the em dash itself isn’t new or computer-made.
Takeaway: Overusing em dashes raises unnecessary AI red flags.
Question
Where did the name ’em dash’ come from?
Tags:
#writinghistory #punctuation
Answer
The em dash gets its name because it’s as wide as a capital letter M. Back when printed type was set by hand, the pieces had to match the exact width of that letter.
Takeaway: Em dashes are literally the width of the letter M.
Question
What’s the difference between an en dash and an em dash?
Tags:
#punctuation #writingtips
Answer
An en dash is as wide as the letter N, and an em dash is as wide as the letter M. The em dash is longer and used for bigger breaks or emphasis, while the en dash is for things like date ranges.
Takeaway: Em dashes are longer and add stronger pauses than en dashes.
Question
Why wasn’t I taught about em dashes in school?
Tags:
#writingtips #writinghistory #education
Answer
Typewriters didn’t have em dashes, so many of us never learned about them in school. The technology just skipped over them, and our writing habits followed suit.
Takeaway: Typewriters kept em dashes out of most classrooms.
Question
Should I stop using em dashes so people don’t think my work is AI?
Tags:
#contentediting #AIwriting
Answer
I’m starting to avoid em dashes in my writing—not because they’re wrong, but because I don’t want readers to think AI wrote my stuff. I replace them with space-dash-space, just to play it safe.
Takeaway: Sometimes it’s smarter to avoid em dashes for now.
Question
Can using too many em dashes make my writing confusing?
Tags:
#writingclarity #punctuation
Answer
Absolutely. Overusing em dashes can make your writing feel choppy or artificial. Just because they’re technically correct doesn’t mean you need them everywhere.
Takeaway: Less is more when it comes to em dashes.
Question
What’s a quick way to remove em dashes from my document?
Tags:
#writingtools #contentediting #practicaltips
Answer
Just use find and replace. Search for the em dash and swap it for something less conspicuous, like a space-dash-space, especially before sending your work out.
Takeaway: Find and replace is your friend for quick punctuation fixes.
Question
Can AI grammar tools like Grammarly add extra em dashes to my writing?
Tags:
#AIwriting #writingtools #editing
Answer
Yes, even editing tools powered by AI might suggest adding em dashes for “correctness.” Always double-check before accepting those changes, or you might end up with more than you intended.
Takeaway: Don’t let AI tools over-police your punctuation.
Question
Is it wrong to use a colon or parentheses instead of an em dash?
Tags:
#writingstyle #punctuation
Answer
Not at all. Colons, parentheses, and even a simple dash can replace an em dash in most cases. The key is clarity—pick what makes your point easiest to read.
Takeaway: Use whatever punctuation fits your style—clarity comes first.
Question
Does replacing em dashes affect the grammar of my writing?
Tags:
#writingtips #grammar
Answer
No, swapping em dashes for other punctuation usually keeps your grammar intact. The meaning won’t change; it just reads less like something generated by AI.
Takeaway: Swapping punctuation won’t wreck your grammar.
Question
Why is the em dash getting so much attention lately?
Tags:
#AIwriting #writingtrends
Answer
It’s because people are trying to spot AI writing, and the em dash has become a clue. Since AI uses it more than most people, it’s now under the microscope.
Takeaway: AI and em dashes are linked in the public eye.
Question
Can I ask AI to never use em dashes in my writing?
Tags:
#AIwriting #writingtools
Answer
You can ask, but AI doesn’t always listen. That’s why I double-check with a manual search and replace after the fact—just to be sure nothing slips through.
Takeaway: Don’t rely on AI alone to avoid em dashes.
Question
Are em dashes always better than ellipses or parentheses?
Tags:
#writingstyle #punctuation
Answer
Not always. Em dashes are just another option for adding emphasis or splitting up ideas. Sometimes ellipses or parentheses feel more natural—it’s all about the context.
Takeaway: Choose punctuation that matches your tone and message.
Question
Is using em dashes ever considered a mistake?
Tags:
#writingmistakes #punctuation
Answer
It’s not a mistake if you use them right. But if you overdo it, your writing might look forced or overly formal, especially to those on the lookout for AI telltales.
Takeaway: Use em dashes intentionally, not automatically.
Question
What should I tell my editor or typesetter about em dashes?
Tags:
#contentediting #writingworkflow
Answer
If you’re trying to avoid AI suspicion, just ask your editor to swap out any em dashes for a dash with spaces around it. It’s a simple step that helps you sound more human.
Takeaway: Communicate your punctuation preferences clearly with your editor.
Question
How did AI get so good at grammar and style guidelines?
Tags:
#AIwriting #writingeducation
Answer
AI studies massive amounts of writing—from classics to style guides—so it absorbs rules most of us never learned. That’s why it often sounds more “correct” than a regular person.
Takeaway: AI learns every style guide—even the obscure ones.
Question
Are em dashes old-fashioned or still useful?
Tags:
#writinghistory #punctuation
Answer
Em dashes have been around forever, and they’re still practical for adding clarity or emphasis. Just don’t make them your default, or they’ll stand out for the wrong reasons.
Takeaway: Use em dashes purposefully—they’re timeless, not trendy.
