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Why is everyone suddenly angry at these — em-dashes?
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Why is everyone suddenly angry at these — em-dashes?

Punctuations are fun. Never thought I would say this.
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Usually, I start with an anecdote to convey why this question or topic matters to me. What exactly about it made me sit in front of a laptop and press the individual keys on the keyboard for some ungodly amount of hours? This time, there is nothing like that. It’s just this question that has been bothering me a lot recently. Why is everyone using these long dashes everywhere now? And why are people so divided on their use?

Is life just a series of punctuation?

A few months ago, a LinkedIn post caught my attention. The post mentioned that these long dashes, called em-dash, are a clear giveaway that the text is AI-generated. Instagram reels were made, Rolling Stones wrote an article and people had all sorts of opinions. Some people on the internet even have renamed em-dash to ‘ChatGPT Hyphen’. Some were livid at people using this punctuation, while others were annoyed by the first set's lack of knowledge of grammatical elements.

If you sleuth around OpenAI’s developer and support community forums, you will find a ton of threads talking about how em-dashes are becoming a pain for people who use ChatGPT’s APIs for their business chat support. There are also similar threads on Reddit talking about how it is quite difficult to stop ChatGPT from using em-dash. It basically ignores the request. This becomes so evident when you ask ChatGPT to rephrase things, correct the sentences or add more to what you have written.

To begin with I didn’t even know what these long dashes were called. There are three very similar-looking punctuations in the language: the hyphen, the en-dash and the em-dash. Hyphen is the most commonly used and the shortest of the three dashes. Hyphen is something that I often miss in things I write. It connects two words in a well-edited article. The small line that connects “well” and “edited” in the last sentence is a hyphen. The en-dashes are longer than the hyphen and are often used to show ranges. I don’t think I have ever used an en-dash I have always shown ranges with a hyphen. But the person of interest here is none other than the now infamous em-dash. Em-dash is the longest among the three. It is called an em-dash because it is apparently as wide as the capital letter ‘M’ in the same font. Em-dashes essentially show an interruption to the writer's line of thought and help in adding more information to a sentence. John Green has a really nice video on these en-dashes and em-dashes.

I have not only never heard of an em-dash before, I didn’t even know how to type one. On the phone, I have to long press the hyphen key until four other options pop up and the third one among them is the punctuation of interest. In a standard ‘QWERTY’ laptop keyboard, the em-dash is not to be seen anywhere. Hyphen has a dedicated key and shift pressing that key makes an underscore. What I really found fascinating was that there is a Wikipedia page called ‘How to Make Dashes’. It has all the methods and shortcuts you can use to make these dashes including the em-dash. In Windows, it is ‘alt + 0151’ and in Mac, it is ‘option+shift+minus/hyphen’. Alternatively, many writing platforms like Google Docs and Notion, support double hyphens. The application converts these double hyphens into an em-dash.

So, for all those posts and comments on LinkedIn, Instagram, Bluesky, X (the app formerly known as Twitter) and countless other platforms, is everyone doing these convoluted steps to add at least five em-dashes?

I notice these em-dashes everywhere now. So much so that I slowly started doubting myself. Either people have actually started using more of these em-dashes or this is a classic case of frequency illusion. The frequency illusion (also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon) is a cognitive bias in which a person, in this case me, notices a specific concept, word, or product (the em-dashes) more frequently after recently becoming aware of it (which is the LinkedIn post).

To check this, I did three things.

Step 1: Touching some grass, in this case, some pages

I was wondering if these em-dashes were used much in the past. Being from a non-literary background and zoning out in high school English classes, I never noticed these long dashes and their difference. So I dusted off some older, printed books and started counting the number of em-dashes.

I went through the first two chapters of 8 books in total. A mix of fiction and non-fiction. Catch 22, the book, just had one em-dash and it came up in the second chapter. Whereas Malcolm Gladwell’s tipping point had 35. Similar to Malcolm Gladwell, Jack Welsh’s ‘Winning’ had 29 em-dashes in just the first chapter and introduction. The famous Brief History of Time just had 8 and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens had 0 em-dashes till the second chapter. The one that stood out to me was the book, hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The best book I have ever read. There were 33 em-dashes in the introduction and first chapter alone.

What does this all mean? Absolutely nothing.

I wish I could say that em-dashes were more used for a specific genre of literature or by writers from specific regions, but no. I can’t even say that I enjoy one type over the other. I hated Jack Welsh’s ‘Winning’ while I loved Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Tipping Point. Em-dashes are just a writer’s choice and one of the tools used to invoke the tone they want.

Em-dashes have been used for a long time. At least in printed literature. I even read somewhere that Shakespeare’s printers used em-dashes quite often. So em-dashes have their origin in printing, so how about their presence in online content? After all, it is not quite straightforward to type an em-dash on a standard keyboard.

Step 2: Digging through the internet

There are some pieces of the internet that I always keep going back to. Aaron Shwartz’s blog, Ross Ulbrich’s medium article, the magazine Marginal Revolution and some more. It’s a glimpse of what the internet used to be. But this time, I was there for the 'punctuations'. Em-dashes were significantly less in those articles but they were there. One or two in a two or three-page article. I had my doubts if it was a cultural thing. Writers from the US use more em-dashes. So I found a compilation of essays written by high-schoolers and community college students. First of all, great pieces of writing and an even better thought process. More importantly, at least in this context, there were very less em-dashes.

I also went back to blog posts from some linked influencers that I follow. Old 2022 and 2023 articles rarely had any em-dashes, whereas the new ones are riddled with them. I just want to be extra clear here, I am not judging people or their writing on the use of em-dashes nor am I saying that they are all using ChatGPT. Em-dashes are just a punctuation that people can use whenever and wherever they wish to, provided they are grammatically correct.

Yet, it is not a secret that ChatGPT uses them way too much. What bothers me is, why didn’t this become a point of discourse much earlier? Why did we wait three years since the launch of ChatGPT to get angry at this particular punctuation?

Step 3: ChatGPT's history check

My first interaction with Open AI’s bot was way back in 2021. When all they had was something called ‘Open AI playground’, which still exists, but it is now a bit more complex interface with even more control on the models and the API usage and stuff.

I checked the piece of paragraph I made back in 2021 and there were no em-dashes. I went back through my friend’s ChatGPT history as well. Em-dashes were extremely rare. From November 2022 to early 2024, across hundreds of chats with GPT, there were rarely any em-dashes. In these early days, which was literally just two years ago, ChatGPT used to sound like a Buzzfeed listicle with some ugly bullet points. This was heavily criticised in the community as well. They said it sounded too logical and more like a machine. Peak 2023 irony I guess.

What I noticed was that, over a period of 2-3 months, specifically around May, June and July, the em-dashes started creeping in. This was the ChatGPT’s new models GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini updates. The main aspect of these models was their superior analysis and reasoning capabilities with a broader context window. A perfect em-dash-shaped gap being filled. This along with the previous voice feature, that was released right before this update, made ChatGPT more, I hate to say it, human.

I don’t know if this update was the reason. OpenAI never confirmed and no one can say for sure. The timing of the update just aligns quite well with the increase in em-dashes in content and social media. Eventually followed by the ongoing debate and discourse on whether em-dashes are a sign of AI-generated content.

From all those blogs, old and new, as well as the books and articles what I feel is that em-dashes are simply great. The whole point of this punctuation is to add more context and information. A way to avoid misinterpretations or even add a more personal touch to the content.

If they are grammatically correct, a lot of these typing software supports em-dashes and most importantly if the em-dashes add more context and information, why is everyone looking down upon it?

I think writing is a very personal activity. Doesn’t matter what the purpose is. Stories, poetry and other literary works are obvious but what about ad copies? What about UX writing? What about a user manual? I believe they are equally personal as well.

I think I feel a bit let down when I realise what I am reading is AI-generated, especially where it is not supposed to be. Like a personal comment, a piece of advice or even an opinion. I truly know that it’s a 'me problem', but I don't think I am alone here as well. I mean this is one of the reasons behind the type of content that gives you framework and techniques to spot AI work.

Anyone who has used ChatGPT knows that it overuses em-dashes a lot. Every couple of lines will have an em-dash. I imagine it to be like, AI being overly cautious with what it says. An attempt at adding maximum context to things it generates, the lack of which was criticised and then taught to correct in its early years.

A two-line LinkedIn comment might not need an em-dash. A 500-word essay doesn’t necessarily need 50-odd em-dashes. This density of em-dashes is not what we are used to. Em-dashes become such a useful tool that there is a tendency to overuse them. Be it a human or an AI. The sole reason being, making things simpler is so damn difficult, especially really long and complex sentences. The problem with that is, the higher the em-dash density, the more complex the comprehension becomes. I mean, how much context needs to be pushed into a small paragraph? At least for me, it’s mentally taxing to switch between multiple contexts back and forth. Once or twice in a page, makes a lot of sense but not in every paragraph.

I think what happened to em-dashes is, what they call in linguistics, a pragmatic shift. Basically an addition or a change in the layers of meaning that are associated with a word or a symbol. In this case, the humble em-dash. The purpose and the mechanism of the punctuation haven’t changed in itself, but the implied meaning that forms in the mind of the viewer or reader is being associated with AI-generated content. It’s like, I see a couple of em-dashes and I question its genuineness and authenticity. This pragmatic shift, how much ever unfair to em-dashes, can’t be ignored.

I understand the frustration of people who have been using em-dashes before ChatGPT came into the picture because I really like em-dashes now. Never thought, I would be fascinated by a punctuation. Em-dashes shift the tone of the writing to a very personal note. Make you feel like, the writer is saying something that’s just between you and the writer. It also looks nice. A long line without any letters. A much appreciated break for the reader and the page looks more airy and fresh. Don’t know if that makes any sense whatsoever.

I think this is a classic example of a cultural shift in the meaning of a symbol. Words, especially written, are just symbols and they leave a lot of room for interpretation and imagination. About the meaning as well as the intent. But I don't think this is like a permanent change to the purpose of an em-dash. What I mean by that is, some people are pushing back on this narrative. Writers who have been in the business for some time are trying to hold on to the original intent of an em-dash. If anything, this discourse is making people like me look up and learn about punctuation—which I should have cared to learn in my high school English class.

Thanks for reading. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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