The Death of the Em Dash: When Emotion Became Artificial By Dusty Wentworth

There is a quiet, painful irony in modern writing: the very mark of punctuation once used to capture the rhythm of human thought—the em dash—is now often treated as a tell-tale sign of artificial intelligence. It seems strange that a simple line could lead to an accusation of machine writing, yet in our rush for ‘content’, rhythm and expression are now met with suspicion.

I remember when writing was taught with care. We learnt about structure, tone and the weight of a pause. Penmanship mattered. Words were crafted with intention, not mass-produced. Those of us who came before Google, before mobile phones and home computers, grew up with typewriters, pens and paper. We thought electric typewriters were cutting-edge. Writing meant thought and effort, not algorithms and templates—a distinction young writers now struggle to grasp.

The em dash was once a writer’s most faithful ally. It carried a change of thought, a shift in emotion, a breath between words. It wasn’t decoration; it was rhythm. Many great writers used it to shape feeling on the page because it mirrored how people actually spoke. Now, with AI systems churning out endless streams of formulaic output, the em dash has been overused and flattened into something empty. The result is a painful misreading: readers now see the dash and assume the worst—that an algorithm is at work.

Something else has been lost along the way. Schools no longer teach expressive writing as an art. Creative structure, tone and cadence have given way to checklists and key phrases designed to meet targets. Young writers are taught to meet criteria, not to find their voice. It’s no wonder many of them now struggle to recognise the difference between genuine expression and algorithmic output.

Our education system has become too focused on performance data, too quick to discard the slow, rewarding process of developing style. Outside the classroom, the world has grown restless. People scroll endlessly, chasing the next quick hit of dopamine from a headline or a half-read post. Reading has become scanning. Thinking has become reacting. Attention has become a currency we’re all running short of.

In that rush, the subtlety of writing has been left behind. Punctuation once helped to breathe life into sentences. Now, it’s either stripped away for brevity or treated with suspicion when it feels too human. The irony is painful. What once gave writing its heart now makes people wonder if a machine wrote it.

The truth is, no algorithm can understand exhaustion, memory or the quiet pause that comes when you’ve lived through too much to say it all at once. An em dash can hint at that, if used with feeling. It is not a sign of artificial intelligence, but of human experience—the kind that comes from years, not code.

This reflection isn’t only about punctuation. It’s about what we risk losing: the patience, the honesty and the craft. Writing, at its best, connects us to something deeper. If we lose that, we risk losing not just the art of writing, but the art of thought itself.

So, if you see one in my writing, know that it’s there for a reason. Not because a machine placed it, but because a human did. Someone who still remembers the sound of typewriter keys, the smell of ink on paper, and a time when we were taught not just how to write, but how to think.

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