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Stop Accusing Writers of Using AI Just Because They Use Em Dashes

We love you, em dash. 

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The other night—while decompressing after a long day of writing—I was scrolling through comments on an Instagram post and spotted one that stopped me dead in my tracks: “This was clearly written by AI. The em dashes are a dead giveaway.”

I’ve never jumped out of bed and started pacing in anger so quickly in my life.

Are we serious? Are we so far gone that the proper use of punctuation is an apparent indicator of AI?

How many of you assumed this very article was AI-generated, thanks to the two em dashes in my first sentence? Unfortunately, I’d guess at least a quarter of you had that initial thought.

While I fully understand the urge to call out AI content, nothing boils my blood quite like a reader who falsely accuses writers of using AI merely because they include em dashes in their content. I, for one, have been relying on the em dash since middle school. If you were to read my moody Tumblr poetry from that time, you’d be quick to rescind that accusation. As a writer, I’d marry the em dash if I could.

So you could imagine my rage at this random Instagram comment on someone else’s post—someone I don’t even know, mind you. Surely, it was an overreaction on my part…I can admit my faults.

But as hard as I tried to continue scrolling and ignore this ignorance, the allegation—which didn’t even involve me, at least not directly—has continued to gnaw at me for days.

And so, instead of cursing out the well-intentioned, albeit misinformed, commenter or ripping the hair out of my head, I decided to write this article. The pen is........

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