“In recent months, a curious obsession has arisen within certain academic circles: the em dash. More precisely, the supposed moral panic about how it is spaced. A dash without spaces on either side?Must be AI-generated writing. Case closed. ” — Joseph Mellors, Inside Higher Ed - - - I want to respond to the recent smear spreading across social media, editorial Slack channels, and even the margins of otherwise respectable Substack newsletters. Specifically, the unfounded, defamatory claim that my use reveals artificial intelligence at work. Listen up, my dear friend. Writers have employed me long before AI appeared. I am the punctuation equivalent of a cardigan—cherished by MFA grads, pulled out by editors when things get serious, and worn year-round by screenwriters. I'm no newcomer. I'm no novelty. I’m the cigarette you always say you’ll quit but never do. You think I debuted with ChatGPT?Mary Shelley used me—without restraint. Dickinson?Completely obsessed. David Foster Wallace erected a footnote temple in my honor.

I’m not some slick, futuristic symbol. I’m the worn, coffee-stained backbone of writerly anxiety—the gasping pause where a thought tried to end but couldn’t. Let’s be real: the problem isn’t me—it’s you. You just don’t read enough. If you did, you’d know I’ve been around for centuries. I’m in Austen. I’m in Baldwin. I’ve appeared in Pulitzer-winning works, viral op-eds, and the closing lines of breakup emails needing “extra punch. ” Novelists, bloggers, essayists, and that one friend who types exclusively in lowercase but still demands emotional depth—all of us wield me. If anything, AI uses me as much as any sentence-obsessive who ever stared at a line like it owed them rent. In fact, go to the nearest café, glance left, then right. Every single person is sprinkling me across sentences like more cheese on parmesan-drenched risotto—without tasting, thinking, or remorse. Yet when a note-heavy think piece goes live, somehow I’m the culprit—not the blatant neglect of fact-checking. Just because I’m not on the keyboard—and require two extra steps to appear properly—I’m suddenly the byproduct of soulless technology?Please. AI has no deadlines. No ego. No tired human brain hoarding forty of me in a draft, only for an editor to cut twenty. I am the punctuation mark of human imperfection. I am writer’s block, broken mid-sentence. I am the original vibe shift. So next time you read something and think, “AI wrote this—it uses way too many em dashes, ” ask yourself: Is it AI?Or just a poet trying to give you vertigo in four lines or less? Exactly. Signed, —The Em Dash