M.A. Rothman@MichaelARothman
𝐍𝐎, 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐈. 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.
I see it constantly now. Someone reads a post or an article and spots an em dash — that long horizontal line — and immediately declares it was written by AI. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐦 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐡, 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐆𝐏𝐓. You know who else uses em dashes? People who actually learned how English punctuation works.
I don't normally step on this particular soapbox — and I commit authorial malpractice by never trying to sell you my books — but I've authored over 30 of them. Many have been international bestsellers. Well over 𝟏,𝟎𝟎𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐬 in print, translated into 7+ languages, sold around the world. I am, amongst many other things, an actual author. So let me give you a quick education your grammar teachers apparently skipped.
The em dash — this thing right here — is one of the most versatile punctuation marks in the English language. It's called an "em dash" because in traditional typesetting, it was the width of the capital letter M in whatever typeface you were using. It serves three primary functions. First, it sets off a parenthetical statement within a sentence — like this one — when you want more emphasis than commas provide but less formality than parentheses. Second, it signals an abrupt break in thought or a dramatic pivot. Third, it introduces an explanation or amplification of what came before it. Writers have been using it for centuries. Emily Dickinson used em dashes so obsessively her manuscripts look like they were attacked by a horizontal line. Mark Twain used them constantly in dialogue. So did F. Scott Fitzgerald. None of them had access to ChatGPT.
Now for a bit of trivia most people never learn. There's also an 𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐡 — slightly shorter, the width of the letter N. The en dash has a narrower purpose: it connects ranges. Pages 12–44. The years 1941–1945. The New York–London flight. It's the dash between two things that are connected but distinct. Most people have never heard of it, and most fonts render it just barely shorter than an em dash, which is why almost nobody notices the difference.
Both have been part of formal typography since the invention of movable type in the 15th century. Gutenberg's typesetters used varying dash lengths to organize text. By the 18th century, printers had standardized the em and en dash as distinct glyphs with distinct grammatical functions. This isn't some modern AI invention — it's older than the United States.
And if you use Microsoft Word, they're trivially easy to type. An en dash is Ctrl + Minus on the numeric keypad. An em dash is Ctrl + Alt + Minus on the numeric keypad. Word also auto-converts two hyphens (--) into an em dash if you have autocorrect enabled. That's why you see me use them in my books and in my posts — because I know they exist and I know the keyboard shortcut.
The reason AI chatbots use em dashes frequently is because they were trained on well-written text — books, journalism, academic papers — written by people who knew the rules. The AI learned proper punctuation from proper writers. That doesn't make proper punctuation a sign of AI. It makes it a sign of 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲.
For the record, the only things I use AI for are conjuring up a quick graphic — like the image on this post — or as a shortcut for preliminary research. Think of it as a Google accelerator. The writing? That's all me. It has been for 30+ books and countless social media posts such as this one.
If you've reached the end of this post, you now know more about dashes than most people who graduated with an English degree. And the next time you see an em dash and your first instinct is to scream "AI" — maybe consider that what you're actually looking at is someone who paid attention in class. Or someone whose grammar teachers didn't fail them quite as badly as yours failed you.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐦 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝟓𝟎𝟎 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐥𝐝. 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐬.
