Who Stole My Em Dash?

One of my biggest gripes with LLMs is that they’ve co-opted the em dash.

I’ve always loved using it in my writing—it doesn’t end a sentence like a period, and it’s more than just a pause like a comma.

It allows for continuity, a natural extension of thought. It mirrors the way we often speak—wandering, clarifying, expanding.

But LLMs have embraced it so thoroughly (and rightfully so) that now, when a human uses it, it just looks like the writing came from an AI :/

What a strange place to be—outwritten in our own language, one dash at a time.

(It’s called an em dash or M dash because it’s supposed to be the width of the letter M)

For reference,

- (Hyphen)

– (En dash)

— (Em dash)