It started innocently enough. You'd see an em dash here and there—a perfectly normal piece of punctuation living its best life.
Then ChatGPT dropped, and suddenly every piece of writing had em dashes sprouting like grammatical mushrooms after rain.
Now we're all punctuation conspiracy theorists.
Your boss sends an email with an em dash? Sus.
Your mom texts you with one? "Mom, did you use AI to write that message?"
Your coworker's presentation has perfect em dashes? Claude wrote that.
The em dash has become the Comic Sans of the AI era. Perfectly functional, but so overused by robots that humans can't touch it without looking guilty. It's like wearing a fedora, technically fine, but everyone knows what you've been up to.
We've created a world where using proper punctuation makes you look like a fraud. Congratulations, technology, you made us afraid of grammar.
The real tragedy? Somewhere out there, a middle school English teacher is crying because their students are now terrified to use the em dash they worked so hard to teach them.
RIP em dash (1800s–2025). You were too good for this world, and that's exactly why we can't have nice things.
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