I am not anti-AI. I’m not angry at or scared of it as a concept, but I do have one bone to pick. AI ruined my favorite punctuation mark.

ChatGPT in particular has coined the em dash as its signature. Honestly, the word “signature” doesn’t quite get across how much the program uses em dashes. Put in any prompt, and an em dash will sneak into its answer. 

Users picked up on this recurring theme over time, so now, the em dash is closely associated with AI. Most people stay away from using the dash to avoid being confused for AI – which is terrible for those of us who are punctuation-savvy. 

With all beef aside, AI has proved itself helpful for school in many ways. I find myself turning to ChatGPT or Google Gemini, asking, “Can you simplify this idea for me?” or “Is there a better word for this sentence?”

But some students overuse AI – so much so that professors have taken on a new role as detectives, searching for misuse. Things like turnitin.com or AI checkers emerged as possible ways to detect plagiarism and AI.  

But here’s the issue: it is impossible to distinguish AI-generated text with 100% certainty. An article by New Scientist compares the lack of AI detection to the flip of a coin. 

The OpenAI Developer Community also affirms this claim. The Community said there is no accurate way to detect AI, but there are some possible indicators. The example they provided: my beloved em dash. 

There is beauty to the em dash. It’s called the em dash (—) because it’s about the length of the capital letter M. It has (what I like to think of as) a little family. In the dash family, there’s also the en dash (–) and the hyphen (-).  

The members of the dash fam aren’t to be carelessly interchanged – just like how you and your siblings aren’t the same person, neither are they. In literary works, the en dash indicates ranges (i.e., 2020–2025), the hyphen usually connects two words, and the em dash can function just like parentheses, commas, semicolons or colons. 

We use em dashes in things like essays because they’re great for navigating thoughts and parenthetical ideas. The thing is, though, in journalistic writing, we use the en dash with spaces on either side because it transfers better on the web and in print issues, and it reads a little easier. 

So, throughout this piece, I’ve used the spaced en dash where I would use the unspaced em dash in an assignment for another class. If this wasn’t an article—I would use the em dash like that. 

All technicalities aside, the em dash isn’t a major or super important punctuation mark because it functions just like parentheses, commas, semicolons or colons.  

So, if they can always be replaced by another punctuation mark, then why use them? Because it’s dramatic. Em dashes interrupt the natural flow of a sentence – especially if you’re using one to set apart an idea you want to draw attention to. 

To me, what makes good writing is hearing the author’s voice. I absolutely adore writers who craft their pieces into stories that sound like I’m inside their brain. 

All my journalism friends have their own unique writing style. Each one of them is distinct from the next, and that’s what makes interesting stories.  

I love the em dash so much because it provides me with the tools to force my readers into the exact flow that I want my stories to be read in. If I want an important pause or a redirect in thought, I’ll use an em dash. 

Now that you see the appeal and understand the value, we can revisit the unfortunate turn of events. Recently, “it came to the attention of internet linguists that AI appears to be deploying it way too much,” according to NPR. We are subconsciously trained to associate the em dash with AI.

So now, working overtime as detectives, teachers flag em dashes as evidence of AI.  

Because the em dash is an under-appreciated asset in writing, many students don’t know how it works exactly, so when an em dash appears in someone’s paper, it creates a little cloud of doubt.  

My home department professors know that I know what an em dash is – in fact, they know how much I love my em dash. But for my minor or gen ed classes, those professors don’t know me as well.  

Any em dash strikes them as suspicious, so to avoid getting flagged, I learned to let go of my em dash. And I believe the quality of my writing has taken a hit. So, this is my plea: Give me back my em dash. 

I know it’s scary to think students can be overusing AI, but taking your anger out on my sweet innocent em dash isn’t going to solve any problems. Our technological world has progressed to the point where AI is undetectable, so we should accept that and take other approaches.

I’m not anti-AI, and I’m not angry at or scared of it as a concept. I think if we’re resourceful, academics can excel with it. In the coming years, as the concept progresses, we should be creating new measures to ensure academic integrity – instead of a last resort that isn’t entirely foolproof.