The death of the em dash (and who killed it)

It had a good run. But somewhere between 2022 and now, the em dash quietly became the biggest giveaway that a human didn't write what you are reading.

There is a punctuation mark that used to show real confidence. It gave you a pause with some proper weight behind it. Writers absolutely loved it because it could do almost anything. It could interrupt a thought, add a bit of emphasis or slot in an extra detail without the fussiness of brackets. Used well, it had a lovely rhythm. Used badly, it was all a bit much. Either way, it was a proper choice made by a real person.That punctuation mark is the em dash. And for all practical purposes, it is completely finished.

This is not because anyone banned it, and it is not because a style guide finally put its foot down. It is finished because AI has completely written it to death. If you open your LinkedIn feed right now and scroll for thirty seconds, you will find at least one post structured exactly like this: an opening hook, a colon, a list of things introduced with em dashes and a closing line about growth or insight. The em dash didn't die in a scandal. It died of total overuse by machines that had absolutely no idea what made it special in the first place.

The em dash didn't die in a scandal. It died of total overuse by machines that had absolutely no idea what made it special in the first place.

This is one of the stranger side effects of AI becoming a normal part of how people write. The models do not understand punctuation the way a human writer does. They just match patterns. They have been trained on huge amounts of text, and somewhere in that text, confident writers used em dashes to good effect. So the models reached for them constantly, in every single context and at every opportunity, whether the sentence actually needed one or not.

The result is that a bit of punctuation that once showed real editorial judgment now reads as an immediate red flag. Spot an em dash in a LinkedIn post and your brain quietly logs it as AI. Spot two and you have stopped reading the actual content and started wondering what else got outsourced.

It is not just the em dash, of course. There is a whole vocabulary going the exact same way. Think of words like delve, nuanced and tapestry. Or the phrase "let's unpack this" and the word "furthermore" at the start of a paragraph. Individually, each of these was perfectly fine. Collectively, they have become a bit of an accent that AI picked up and hasn't yet been able to drop.

What does this actually mean for anyone writing professionally? A few things.

First, the bar for sounding like a real human has quietly risen. It used to be enough to write in complete sentences and avoid obvious mistakes. Now there is a second question running underneath every single piece of content: does this read like a person wrote it, or does it look like someone just asked a chatbot and hit publish? The audience is asking that question whether they realise it or not.

Second, the value of a genuine human voice has gone right up. When everyone's content is roughly the same quality because it is all coming from the same handful of models with the same defaults, the thing that actually stands out is personality and specificity. It is the kind of detail that only comes from someone who was actually there, who genuinely cares or who has a real point of view they are willing to commit to. If you want to see how we build distinct personalities for brands, take a look at our Services page to see our approach to marketing and strategy.

Third, and perhaps most usefully, these AI telltale signs are becoming a brilliant checklist. Want to know whether your content sounds human? Check for em dashes, especially right in the middle of a sentence. Check for the word delve. Check for bullet lists that start with a bold word followed by a colon. Check for the rhetorical question that opens a post and then immediately answers itself. If three of those are in there, you have some editing to do.

None of this means AI tools are useless for writing because they aren't. Used well, they are genuinely helpful for drafting, figuring out a structure and getting past the blank page. The problem isn't the tool itself. The problem is publishing the very first draft without refining your approach. If you want to make sure your team uses these tools properly, you can read about our Clothier Lacey AI Services where we help businesses balance tech with an authentic tone.

The value of a genuine editorial voice has gone up. When everyone's content is roughly the same, the thing that actually stands out is personality.

The em dash will recover eventually. Give it a few years and the AI defaults will shift, the markers will change and some other innocent bit of punctuation will take the hit. In the meantime, if you want your writing to sound like it came from a person, the quickest win available is to write like a person. Which means, at the very least, leaving the em dashes alone.

At Clothier Lacey, we think about this stuff constantly. We look at voice, tone and what content actually sounds like out in the wild. It turns out those things matter more than ever, and for reasons that probably weren't obvious two years ago. If you want to talk about what your brand actually sounds like online or off, you can head straight to the Clothier Lacey Homepage to get in touch with our team.