In defense of the em dash

Boston Globe

02-05-2025

There are
But as some have
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ChatGPT's writing is the product of the 90 Pulitzer Prize nominees from 1924 to 2020, 95 bestsellers from The New York Times and Publisher's Weekly in the same timeframe, and other works it was
If you're feeling unsure about how to use the punctuation mark, the em dash (—) can be used to set off extra information — like a Shakespearean aside — in the middle of a longer passage. It functions like — and can be used instead of — commas or parentheses. With an em dash, you can rise above an ordinary train of thought as if on an observation deck — wow!
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Citing one piece of punctuation to judge whether something has been written by artificial intelligence is dangerous. It could lead to teachers grading their students improperly or prospective hires being rejected.
After all, great writers have used the em dash throughout history.
In 'Mrs. Dalloway,' Virginia Woolf combined em dashes with semicolons and sprinkled them like seeds on the breeze:
'How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, 'Musing among the vegetables?' — was that it? — 'I prefer men to cauliflowers' — was that it?'
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once went comedically overboard in his journal to prove a point:
'I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself,' wrote Kierkegaard.
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Being em-dash-happy isn't a style that ChatGPT invented, and we shouldn't give it credit for that. Real em dash fans have been singing its praises online for years.
'The em dash can also usurp the semicolon's glory — for it shows more than equality! The em dash has its own veritable inflection — its own tempo! One can use it profusely to show excitement and dynamism of thought,'
—
long before ChatGPT made its Kool-Aid-man-esque entrance into our lives.
Now the em dash might need our help. A new generation of writers must feel free to use the fanciful
—
if sort of funky looking
—
punctuation in peace. It's there to let them set their creative impulses free.
As one poster
I use the em dash because it allows me to construct sentences — castles of thought, really — that contain unexpected, experimentally jazzy multitudes. Long story short — they're fun. I will not let ChatGPT — the 'helpful' roommate who dyes all your white socks beige in the wash of literature — make writing less fun.