ChatGPT stole my em dash

By Sophie Blaken

I love a dash — it’s a great way to split a sentence. Neater than a full stop. Lighter than a semicolon. More elegant, even, than a comma (or brackets) when you want to inject a thought or add a flourish. Used properly, it’s a brilliant tool for rhythm and tone. But these days, I avoid them.

Not because I’ve stopped liking them. Quite the opposite. I still catch myself typing one instinctively – fingers reaching for the shortcut – before deleting it with a sigh.

Why? Because I don’t know about you, but when I see a dash now – especially an em dash – I automatically assume AI wrote the content.

It sounds ridiculous, I know. But it’s become one of those tell-tale signs. Like overly balanced sentence structure. Or the overuse of the word furthermore. Or that strange formality that feels a little too polished, a little too…processed. The em dash has become part of the AI signature. And unfortunately, once you notice it, you start to doubt everything it touches.

I’ve had it happen with my own work. More than once, I’ve written something, sent it off, and had it come back from QA or a colleague with a single comment: “ChatGPT?” 

The accusation always stings. Not because I’m above using AI – I’m not. I use it regularly. It’s a great tool, and when used well, it can genuinely help sharpen your thinking. But that’s the thing: I want it to support how I articulate myself, not replace how I think. When I’ve sat down and crafted something with care, only for someone to assume a machine did it, it’s frustrating. It feels like it makes my work smaller somehow. A subtle questioning of authorship. And all because of a dash.

The irony is that some of the best writing tools AI has to offer are the very things I’ve worked hard to build as a writer myself. But now, when I use them naturally, they risk being mistaken for automation. Suddenly, my voice doesn’t sound like me anymore. It sounds like ChatGPT. Or at least, that’s how it’s perceived.

So I’ve made the decision to avoid the em dash. Well after this one last article. Not because it’s wrong, or because I don’t still love it, but because it’s no longer trusted. Not by others. And increasingly, not by me.

Maybe one day I’ll reclaim it. AI learns from all that has gone before, so as more writers adapt to life without a dash, maybe AI will too and we’ll be able to add them back to our repertoire. But for now, it’s gone from my toolkit. Stolen – quite innocently – by ChatGPT and its mates.

And while I’ll live without them, I miss them.