The Em Dash Hill We’re Willing to Die On

Raise your hand if you had a fierce em dash battle on your 2025 bingo card—because here we are, obsessed with a tiny horizontal line that’s somehow divided the nation like pineapple on pizza.

Grammar turf wars aren’t new at Hencove. In a 2019 post, we boldly declared our loyalty to the Oxford comma. Think the em dash debacle is dramatic? The Oxford comma—also known as the serial comma—played the main character in a 2018 Maine court case about overtime pay. Without that final comma, the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution” was ambiguous, and a federal appeals court ruled the statute favored employees. Oakhurst Dairy paid its drivers $5 million in overtime—all because of one absent comma, proof that in legal writing, even dairy needs proper separation.

Fast forward to today. Amid the AI explosion, we find ourselves locked in another debate: to em dash or not. It’s no secret that AI is reshaping how we brainstorm, write, and edit content, and the em dash has found itself at center stage.

How the Em Dash Became the Anti-Hero

Early versions of ChatGPT and similar AI writing tools leaned hard into the em dash—even when told not to—because it’s such an effective literary device for pacing, emphasis, and mimicking human speech. A tell was born: an em dash often meant AI-generated content.

As people became more comfortable using AI, em dash usage exploded. The association grew so strong that ChatGPT even issued a tongue-in-cheek apology for ruining the em dash and promised to tone it down in its newer models. Cute, but the reputational damage was already done.

The em dash debate feels silly at times, but it has created real tension in our world. When a couple of clients questioned our use of the em dash—not even overuse—we were a bit taken aback. Our team debated what to do next.

To see if we were imagining things, we took the debate to LinkedIn and asked our followers to pick a side: hero or villain? The em dash clearly has a strong fan base. Most hailed it as a clarity-boosting staple, some were indifferent, and only a few sided with the villain. The divide is real, but support for the em dash is unmistakable.

In Defense of the Em Dash

AI didn’t invent the em dash; it just caused its identity crisis. The “em” comes from old typesetting: a line the width of the letter “m,” with lineage spanning typesetting, literary history, and a track record of clarifying and enriching sentences. Medieval scribes used long strokes to mark breaks in thought. And Emily Dickinson famously favored the em dash to add rhythm to her poetry.

AI’s love for the em dash comes from learning the kinds of writing people readily and easily consume: journalism, fiction, longform storytelling, and ad copy. The very tool meant to help AI sound more human became the thing that made it obviously not.

The em dash mirrors how people talk—a natural pause, a quick aside, a moment of emphasis. Used intentionally, it guides rhythm better than a comma and signals more importance than parentheses. It’s the punctuation equivalent of saying, “Hang on, this part matters.” Humans gave the em dash life long before AI borrowed it.

The Real Problem Isn’t the Em Dash

Let’s be honest: punctuation isn’t the problem; people are. Readers are reacting to AI writing that feels like it all comes from the same content factory. To avoid this, some marketers even suggest adding intentional typos to “sound more human.” We get the intent, but strong writing is about how it works, not how it looks.

There are other obvious signs of AI-generated writing without a human touch: repetitive structure, overly tidy conclusions, and a lack of point of view. The uniformity is what’s frustrating. The em dash is just collateral damage.

Of course, overuse is real. But that’s true for most things, including other punctuation marks. We’ve all read something and thought, “OK, easy with the exclamation points!!!”

Here’s Our Stance on the Em Dash

As marketers who were using the em dash long before AI joined the chat, we don’t want our intentional choice confused with a ChatGPT hallucination. So, drop the em dash? No—it’s in our style guide, in our brand voice, and all over our website.

We’ve been on team em dash since our founding in 2014, and we’re not giving it up yet. Our stance isn’t motivated by stubbornness or nostalgia—OK, maybe a little—but because the em dash works. At the risk of sounding over-the-top (too late?), the em dash is more than a stylistic choice for us. It shapes cadence, creates clarity, and fosters connection with our audience through emotion and nuance. Eliminating it would take away a tool that helps us sound like Hencove: conversational, creative, and slightly cheeky.

As Empaths, We See the Other Side

If clients ask us to dial back or avoid em dashes because their content might look AI-generated, we use it as an opportunity to discuss voice, tone, and writing style. If the net of that conversation is that we remove em dashes, that’s not a problem. Just because the em dash works for our voice doesn’t mean it’s right for every brand.

So, tell us: are you a ride-or-die dasher, a ditcher, or an occasional user? We’d love to hear your thoughts.