Why Em Dashes Became an AI Tell and How Writers Are Moving Away From Them

Описание: The Decline of Em Dashes in AI Writing

Em dashes have quietly become one of the most recognizable fingerprints of AI generated writing. They appear often because large language models were trained on massive amounts of online content where em dashes are commonly used to add rhythm, insert asides, or shift tone mid sentence. Over time, this punctuation became a convenient shortcut for structuring complex ideas, mimicking conversational flow, and replacing commas or parentheses in a single stroke. The result is text that reads smoothly, but also carries a subtle pattern many readers now associate with AI.

What once felt natural now stands out. Because em dashes are harder to type on standard keyboards and are overrepresented in AI outputs, they have become an easy visual cue for detection. Writers and editors are increasingly avoiding them, opting instead for commas, parentheses, or tighter sentence construction. The shift highlights a broader trend in AI assisted writing where realism now means restraint. Controlling punctuation, whether through prompting or style rules, has become part of making AI supported content blend in rather than stand apart.

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