Some self-appointed gatekeepers now claim that the presence of an em dash in a piece of writing exposes it as AI-generated. It’s a convenient accusation—but a false one.

I’ve been transcribing my mother’s letters to her mother from the 1950s, and they are filled with em dashes. She used them for cadence, for contrast, for breath. Writers long before her did the same—from Emily Dickinson to Mark Twain.

AI didn’t create the em dash; it absorbed it from generations of human expression. What we call “AI style” is often just our own language, reflected back to us.