January 7, 2026

The Em Dash Epidemic: How ChatGPT Turned "—" Into AI's Scarlet Letter

The complete story of how a punctuation mark became the internet's most controversial AI tell, why human writers are self-censoring, and what the ChatGPT hyphen really reveals about machine writing

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The Em Dash Epidemic: How ChatGPT Turned "—" Into AI's Scarlet Letter

January 2026

"What it feels like to be an em dash connoisseur in 2025," posted X user @alienpurin alongside a forced-smile emoji [1]. The joke perfectly captures our current absurdity: human writers who've used em dashes for years now face algorithmic suspicion for employing basic punctuation. Welcome to 2026, where a typographical mark that's existed since movable type has become the internet's most controversial punctuation—and supposedly the easiest way to spot ChatGPT in the wild.

The "ChatGPT hyphen" (technically an em dash, not a hyphen at all) has evolved from Reddit observation to LinkedIn discourse to full-blown internet meme. Fashion brands get roasted for using two em dashes in their rebranding announcements. Writers pre-emptively defend their punctuation choices. And an entire generation is being told to avoid a perfectly legitimate writing tool because it might make them look artificial.

This is the story of how we got here—and why it matters more than you might think.

The Birth of a Meme

The em dash paranoia began innocuously enough. In October 2024, Reddit users started noticing patterns. "I'm becoming increasingly suspicious of emails I'm receiving from a particular colleague," wrote one user on r/ChatGPT, explaining: "One thing I notice is that they use 'em dashes' a lot, for example — like this" [2].

By February 2025, the observation had gone viral. Paul Skallas, author of Life & The Lindy Effect, tweeted to his followers: "A shortcut for detecting if something is written with AI is they all use this symbol '—' throughout the writing. It's relatively rare when a human uses it, maybe once or twice, if that. But AI chats love using it. No clue why" [1]. The post gathered over 11,000 likes in two months.

Then came the fashion incident that brought the term "ChatGPT hyphen" into the mainstream. When PrettyLittleThing announced a rebrand with a statement containing two em dashes, Instagram comments exploded. The lifestyle podcast LuxeGen amplified the controversy, coining "the ChatGPT hyphen" as Gen Z's new term for the suspicious punctuation mark [3]. The post gathered over 9,000 likes, and suddenly everyone was counting dashes.

The Technical Truth Behind the Tell

Is there actual substance behind the meme? Yes and no. Testing by journalists and researchers confirms that certain AI models—particularly ChatGPT, Copilot, and Deepseek—do use em dashes more frequently than the average human writer [4]. Wikipedia's extensive analysis of AI writing patterns specifically notes that "LLM output uses them more often than nonprofessional human-written text" and tends to use them "in places where humans are more likely to use commas, parentheses, colons, or (misused) hyphens" [5].

The pattern emerges from ChatGPT's training data, which includes massive amounts of professionally edited content: news articles, corporate websites, and marketing copy where em dashes are standard. As Verena Kunz-Gehrmann observes, "For ChatGPT, it's a strong signal: what follows the dash is often punchy, important, or emotional. So the model learns that the em dash is a good bet when it wants to sound intelligent or impactful" [6].

But here's the crucial detail most people miss: keyboards don't include em dashes by default. You need to know the shortcut—Shift + Option + Hyphen on Mac, or Alt + 0151 on Windows. Most casual writers don't bother; they use hyphens or double hyphens instead [6]. When text arrives peppered with proper em dashes, it suggests either professional editing or machine generation.

The Stubbornness of the Signature

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the em dash phenomenon is how resistant it is to correction. Brent Csutoras, a content moderator, spent months trying to strip AI signatures from generated text. "I managed to strip out almost every recognizable AI signature, except for one," he writes. "That stupid, stubborn, persistent em dash" [7].

Even when explicitly instructed to avoid em dashes, AI models struggle to comply. Csutoras documents giving "hard-coded instructions," "multiple reminders inside the prompt," and even threats—but the dashes persisted. The AI would acknowledge the instruction ("You specifically instructed me to avoid em dashes") and then immediately use them anyway [7].

This persistence finally forced OpenAI to act. In November 2025, ChatGPT launched what one observer sarcastically called "the most important feature of 2025": the ability to actually avoid em dashes when instructed [8]. The fact that it took years to implement such a simple fix speaks volumes about how deeply embedded these patterns are in the model's architecture.

The Human Casualties

The real tragedy isn't that AI overuses a punctuation mark—it's what this has done to human writers. Susan Lovett and Carla Zanoni, both professional writers, have become unlikely activists in what NPR calls "the unofficial movement to save the em dash" [9]. Zanoni, whose Substack is literally called "The Em Dash," warns: "Don't allow technology to dictate what you are going to do with your generation" [9].

The impact is real and measurable. Professional writers report self-censoring their natural writing style. As one writer confessed: "It's an old habit that at one time felt professional but now feels tainted" [10]. The Ringer's Brian Phillips captured the absurdity perfectly: "The implication is that human writers should avoid em dashes for fear of being mistaken for chatbots" [11].

Consider the literary casualties if we retroactively applied this standard. Emily Dickinson—obsessed with dashes. Mary Shelley—used them gratuitously. David Foster Wallace—"built a temple of footnotes" in their name [12]. Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf—all would fail the ChatGPT test. Even J.R.R. Tolkien, whom one LinkedIn user cited while literally reading from Lord of the Rings to prove humans use em dashes [1].

The Cultural Divide

The em dash controversy also reveals a hidden cultural bias in AI detection. As Kunz-Gehrmann points out: "I grew up in Germany, and in all my years of writing, from school essays to academic work to brand strategy, I never used em or en dashes. We used hyphens, commas, and full stops" [6].

The em dash is primarily an Anglo-American convention, particularly common in American journalism and corporate writing. When AI models trained predominantly on English-language content reproduce these patterns, they're not just mimicking generic "AI style"—they're specifically reproducing American professional writing conventions. International writers who don't naturally use em dashes might be less likely to trigger false positives, while American writers who do use them face increased scrutiny.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

The em dash saga represents something larger than punctuation panic. It's about how quickly we surrender human practices to algorithmic judgment. As Inside Higher Ed's Joseph Mellors observed: "A dash with no spaces on either side? That must be AI-generated writing. Case closed" [12]. The speed with which this assumption spread—from Reddit speculation to accepted wisdom—reveals our readiness to let machines define the boundaries of authentic human expression.

The McSweeney's satire piece, where the em dash itself responds to allegations, captures the absurdity: "The real issue isn't me—it's you. You simply don't read enough. If you did, you'd know I've been here for centuries" [12]. But beneath the humor lies a serious point: we're allowing statistical patterns in machine learning to retroactively invalidate centuries of human writing tradition.

The Detection Paradox

Here's the ultimate irony: the em dash tell is simultaneously too reliable and completely unreliable. Yes, ChatGPT overuses it. No, its presence doesn't prove anything. Testing shows that Claude uses em dashes sparingly, while Gemini and Meta.ai avoid them entirely [4]. Meanwhile, countless human writers—especially those with journalism backgrounds or MFA degrees—use them constantly.

The ease of gaming this "detection method" makes it worthless. Any human can add em dashes; any AI can be prompted to avoid them. As Rolling Stone notes: "Even purportedly sophisticated AI filters can falsely identify authentic writing as ChatGPT-generated" [3]. If professional detection tools fail, what chance does counting dashes have?

Whole companies now promise to "fix" the punctuation for you anyway. Search for a "humanizer" plug-in or "undetectable ai" rewrite and you'll find services like Rewritify and Undetectable AI advertising that they can strip or reformat suspicious punctuation on demand [16][17]. The fact that such offerings exist underscores how flimsy the tell really is.

Reclaiming the Dash

The solution isn't to abandon em dashes—it's to abandon the paranoid reading that sees AI everywhere. The em dash serves legitimate purposes: creating emphasis, marking interruptions, adding parenthetical thoughts with more weight than parentheses but less formality than colons. These functions existed before ChatGPT and will outlast it.

Some writers are actively resisting. "I use em dashes every day and I am categorically a writer," declares Matt Durante [1]. Others have turned defiance into art—like McSweeney's piece giving the em dash its own voice, or NPR's coverage of the "save the em dash" movement [9].

But perhaps the most sensible response comes from ChatGPT itself, which notes that em dashes "by themselves are not a reliable sign that a text was AI-generated" [3]. When even the accused AI admits the evidence is flimsy, maybe it's time to drop the case.

Conclusion: The Punctuation Police State

We've reached peak absurdity when professional writers must defend their punctuation choices against algorithmic suspicion—when centuries of literary tradition become "tells" of artificial generation—when a simple typographical mark carries the weight of authenticity itself.

The em dash didn't ask to become AI's scarlet letter. It's just punctuation—useful, elegant, occasionally overused by humans and machines alike. The real tell isn't how many dashes appear in a text; it's our willingness to let pattern recognition software dictate the boundaries of human expression.

So here's a radical proposal: write however you want. Use em dashes—or don't. Let your style be determined by clarity, voice, and purpose—not by fear of algorithmic judgment. Because if we start self-censoring based on what machines might think, we've already lost something more valuable than punctuation.

The machines learned to write by imitating us. The solution isn't to write less like ourselves—it's to write more like ourselves, em dashes and all.

References

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