As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how we write, one small punctuation mark is raising a larger question: can style still signal something distinctly human?
The em dash once signaled something unmistakably human: a mind mid-thought, shifting and interrupting itself. Now, it may signal something else entirely.
As AI-generated writing becomes more common, this once-expressive mark has taken on a new role, not as a flourish of individuality, but as a recognizable pattern. What was once a stylistic choice is becoming a formulaic tell.
“It is quite ironic,” says Elizabeth Palermo (Traill College), Master’s student in Public Texts and a former journalist for Citytv and Toronto Star. “Writers have used the em dash for centuries. It reflects how people actually think, with ideas interrupting and unfolding mid-sentence. It adds rhythm and personality, but only when it’s well-placed and used sparingly. AI is based on patterns of human writing and its use of them is formulaic, which is why cultivating your own voice is more important than ever.”
The use of dashes stretches back centuries to when it was first written, meaning “to strike violently,” which is a fitting origin for punctuation that disrupts a sentence midstream. It appeared in 17th-century printed editions of Shakespeare’s plays and gained devoted champions in the 19th century, when writers used em dashes to signal pauses, shifts in thought and emotional undercurrents that conventional punctuation could not capture. That expressive quality still resonates with writers today.
“Expressing ourselves through storytelling and oral history is inherently human. The em dash allows writers to play with pacing, to spotlight certain words, and to shape voice as it unfolds on the page."
ElizabethPalmero(Traill College)
And yet, that same flexibility, is what makes the em dash so easy for AI to replicate.
Trained on vast datasets of human writing, AI systems reproduce not just vocabulary and grammar, but stylistic tendencies. The em dash, versatile, expressive and easy to deploy, becomes a convenient shortcut to sounding thoughtful. The result is writing that gestures toward nuance without always earning it.
So, has AI ruined the em dash?
