Keep the em dash — even in the age of AI

The em dash serves a meaningful purpose in writing.

The end of the semester is nearing, and I’m gearing up to enter my grading mode. Come next week, I’ll have about 125 stories and projects to edit and grade. (Wish me luck!)

I hope to see a lot of growth in my students’ work, compared to the assignments they submitted at the start of the semester. I also hope to see more of something else entirely: the em dash.

Over this past year, I’ve noticed that the em dash has virtually disappeared from students’ writing assignments. Students have become reluctant to use em dashes (or “ChatGPT hyphens,” as they’re now called) for fear that they’ll be accused of using generative AI to do their writing for them. I understand this fear, and I likely would have felt it too had ChatGPT been around when I was in college (a period in my writing life when I admittedly overused the em dash.)

Credit: Canva

I’ve started telling my students that while they aren’t allowed to use generative AI for writing-related purposes in my classes, they are permitted to use the em dash. This contested form of punctuation might spur scrutiny from some educators and editors, but not from me.

“Don’t let a new technology eradicate a centuries-old form of punctuation,” I tell my students. Some respond with wide eyes, as though something prohibited has suddenly become permissible. This prohibitive feeling isn’t limited to college students; other writers in my professional circles have told me they’ve stopped using the em dash too.

I continue to use it because I consider it to be a valuable writing tool with historic credibility. The em dash has roots in earlier scribal practices, when scribes would write out long strokes to signify pauses. During the advent of movable type, the em dash began to take on a more standardized form. Authors throughout the ages have used the em dash (which is the length of the capital letter M) to help with pacing, momentum, and voice.

In my own writing, I tend to use it for emphasis, contrast, and clarity. My book SLIP has exactly 448 em dashes, and each one serves an intended purpose.

Other writers throughout the decades have inspired my use of em dashes, and their work has taught me to use them with intention. Unlike the period and comma — the omission of which can render a sentence incomplete and incomprehensible — the em dash isn’t indispensable. But it still has value.

I appreciate the em dashes in this Emily Dickinson quote on display in my home office (from artist Kimothy Joy).

Yesterday, as a fun writing exercise, I pulled several books from my shelves and started poring over them in search of em dashes. I found some great examples and have listed some of them below to show what this form of punctuation can do for our writing. I realize it might be a tease to read just a brief passage from an entire book, but I encourage you to check out the full books if the writing intrigues you.

These passages, from across genres, show the power of the em dash to do the following:

To create momentum:

“Today is very beautiful — just as bright, just as blue, just as green and as white, and as crimson, as the cherry trees full in bloom, and the half opening peach blossoms, and the grass just waving, and sky and hill and cloud, can make it, if they try … You thought last Saturday beautiful — yet to this golden day, ’twas but one single gem, to whole handfuls of jewels.” ~Emily Dickinson, from a letter she wrote to her brother. (She’s known for having frequently used em dashes.)

To illustrate an example:

“Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem — constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations — I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.” ~Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner

To emphasize a point:

“The marsh frog warned his friend and pressed him to come and live with him in the marsh, for he would find his quarters there far more comfortable and — what was still more important — more safe.” ~The Two Frogs, Aesop’s Fables.

To highlight a description:

“The room inside looked like the mouth of an alligator — gaped wide open to swallow something down.” ~Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

To convey a revelatory “why”:

“I would eat a bagel but refuse a small bowl of Cheerios — one big O seemed preferable to three hundred or so tiny O’s.” ~Strangers to Ourselves, by Rachel Aviv

To draw attention to a telling truth:

“She never told her husband what she had told me — she was afraid of saying it to anybody else — till one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she said to him: ‘My dear, I think I am dying.’” ~David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

To emphasize the totality of something:

“It was there I learned how I was not a person from my country, nor from my families. I was negrita. Everything. Language, dress, gods, dance, habits, decoration, song — all of it cooked together in the color of my skin.” ~A Mercy, by Toni Morrison

To signify interruption:

“Is it him? he whispered.

I nodded, looked down at the ground.

“I knew you had a crush on him, but —” Randall cleared his throat. “I didn’t think he’d do anything about it.”

~Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward

To provide context that the reader can more easily understand:

“In this procedure, one hundred cubic centimeters — about half a cup — of blood is drawn out of you and irradiated with ultraviolet light, which supposedly kills bacteria and viruses that lead to infections, and strengthens the immune system.” ~The Invisible Kingdom, by Meghan O’Rourke

To show inevitability:

“The last time I was single, I had an 11:00 curfew. If I broke it — when I broke it — I was grounded.” ~You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith

To convey contrast and/or clarification:

“Whoever was hosting a given holiday treated it as an opportunity — no, a challenge — to lay out more food than anyone else had at their holiday.” ~Born Round, by Frank Bruni

To move from telling to showing:

“The physical, tactile nature of journaling by hand is important to me. I love the interaction between paper and palm, how the pen glides across the page, how the letters emerge as images — swooping up, looping back, charging forward.” ~Suleika Jaouad, The Book of Alchemy

I loved seeing the em dash hard at work in these passages. Could they have been written without it? Sure — but the overall effect would have been less powerful. In each example, the em dash adds meaning that sharpens the writing and enhances its overall effect.

The next time you find yourself deleting or avoiding the em dash, consider: Am I deleting it because it truly doesn’t belong here, or because I’m afraid readers will think I’ve used AI? If the latter, keep it in your copy.

As I tell my students, it’s far better to preserve punctuation than to let AI endanger it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! What does your relationship with the em dash look like these days?