AI’s Fingerprint—And the Em Dash That Betrays You

Of all the punctuation marks, my favorite by far is the em dash. It’s a bit punchy and it livens up most writing. The em dash is best at capturing the flow of conversational writing and was always hard to find in business writing. I always saw my mission as promoting it. 

I even performed a tribute to dashes in Dash Upon a Verb, a modern dance piece, at the 2007 Plain Language Association’s conference in Amsterdam expressing my admiration for it. I have skin—and sweat—in the game!

But then Generative AI comes along and starts putting em dashes everywhere. Here’s an example:  

If you’re looking to elevate your writing—make it sharper, more expressive, more alive—don’t overlook the em dash. It’s not just punctuation—it’s style, voice, and control—all in one elegant stroke.  

Sadly, the em dash has become a marker of AI generated text. Why? Because it’s baked into the AI’s DNA. Em dashes are apparently everywhere in the books, articles and essays used as training data. 

And it turns out people are reluctant to present text that’s obviously AI generated as their own, because it makes them appear less competent, less authentic, and less honest. So, if you’re using AI to draft for you, and you want to remove the evidence, you’ll need to know how to replace the em dashes.  

When typing, the conventional, old-fashioned typewriter way to create a dash is to use two hyphens, no spaces anywhere. If you try that in your word processor, the two hyphens turn themselves into a perfect em dash as you keep typing.

The dash is mostly used instead of commas, semicolons, colons or parentheses. The em dash is always stronger, punchier and less formal in tone than the punctuation it replaces. 

If you want to know how to get rid of them, here are some examples with suggestions for how to replace them:

In place of commas Yes, you could use parentheses here too.

• In my hometown the basic needs of people—food, clothing and shelter—are less costly than in Detroit.
• The dash—compared with the comma—adds emphasis to these expressions.
• He is—in a word—game.

In place of the semicolon to separate two independent clauses. A period would also work here.

• I do the work—she gets the credit!
• The president approves your recommendation—moreover, she applauds your analysis.
• Nelson is good at problem solving—he is also good at time management.

In place of the colon, which points the reader forward 

• Three states were represented—Michigan, New York and Illinois.
• She has only one pleasure—reading.
• John took the following—a book, a pen and a pad of paper.

In place of parentheses. You could also use a pair of commas here.

• We ate lunch—sandwiches, coffee and donuts—at noon.
• I made some significant discoveries—and I truly learned—because I truly participated.
• Call Barb Fletcher—she’s with Rapp Electronics—and get her opinion.

Fun fact: we commonly use two dashes: the em dash and the en dash. The en dash is made with space, two hyphens, space. It’s generally used to depict the passage of time, as in
1923 – 2015.