Playwrights like Shakespeare used the em dash to guide actors on performance. It visually represented aposiopesis—speech deliberately broken off—to show thinking pauses, interruptions, or shifts in thought, adding a new layer of expressiveness to written dialogue.
Long before the em dash became associated with AI, it was criticized by literary figures for overuse. Jonathan Swift mocked it in the 18th century, and Lord Byron was panned for it in the 19th, showing a long history of grammatical purists viewing the mark as lazy.
Contrary to common interpretation, Emily Dickinson's prolific use of dashes wasn't just for creating pauses. A literary scholar argues they are a visual element that overrides poetic meter, symbolizing the poem's "unfinishedness" and a mind in constant motion.
Once a staple of human literary expression, the em dash is now often perceived as a sign of AI-generated content. This shift has led to writers, like journalist Brian Vance, being wrongly accused of using AI, highlighting a new form of digital misinterpretation.
The tendency for AI models to overuse em dashes may stem from their training data. To expand their knowledge, companies digitized millions of older books, including 19th-century classics where dash usage was at its historical peak. The models simply adopted this stylistic habit.
To make early novels feel like true accounts, authors like Jane Austen used em dashes to redact sensitive information like names or locations. This stylistic choice mimicked protecting real identities, adding a layer of authenticity and intrigue for readers.
In response to the em dash's association with AI, an agency created the "Am-dash"—a stylized dash. By using this new, rare mark via custom fonts like "Times New Human," writers can symbolically signal their work is human-authored, as LLMs are statistically unlikely to generate it.