I’m reading a novel called “A Gentleman in Moscow.” It’s a gentle book, a little slow-going, but that’s not the point. The point is—egads!—the author uses the em-dash.
Maybe you’ve seen the breathless posts around the literary social media sphere, decrying the use of the em-dash as a red flag that a text has been authored by Artificial Intelligence. Some folks are saying they’re eliminating this gem of punctuation from their repertoire for fear of being run out of town with pitchforks and torches at their backs.
“A Gentleman in Moscow” was published in 2016, which I think we can all agree was very much pre-AI. And so were many other books throughout history which use the em-dash.
My book was published in 2025. The sequel, in work, will come out sometime in 2026. Will I continue using the em-dash? Yes—yes I will. Because it’s an effective tool and always has been.
I asked my own friendly neighborhood chat bot what it thought of this whole kerfuffle and its response was illuminating:
The em-dash has been a staple of good writing for centuries. Some of the most unmistakably human writers lean hard on em-dashes:
- Emily Dickinson — practically built a poetic identity around them
- Herman Melville — sprawling, philosophical dashes everywhere
- Mark Twain — conversational rhythm and comic timing
- William Faulkner — breathless, layered interiority
- Cormac McCarthy — when he uses punctuation at all, it’s often a dash
- Herman Melville — sprawling, philosophical dashes everywhere
If em-dashes meant “AI,” then Moby-Dick and As I Lay Dying would need software licenses. What’s really happening is this: AI writes a lot of grammatically clean prose, and it often uses em-dashes correctly. So people are mistaking competent punctuation for machine authorship. That’s a cultural tell, not a technical one. If anything, avoiding em-dashes out of fear would flatten your prose. So keep using them. Let TikTok linguists clutch their pearls. Real writers know better.”
I love this answer. Especially the zinger at the end.
I will continue to contend that the em-dash is invaluable for fiction writing. As chat pointed out, the em-dash handles things such interrupted thought and sudden emphasis or realization—techniques I use in generous portions in my writing. It also conveys well the rhythms of dialogue and internal voice. Commas aren’t effective at that and periods certainly are not. I don’t use parentheses in fiction, so forget those.
Meantime, be sure to check out my current novel. Or my next—I’ll be talking about it more soon. It too will have em-dashes in all the right places.