In the past I’ve written about the em dash and how people associate it with text written by AI. My conclusion was that I’ve been using it for ages before AI was a thing and the joke at the end was that I should stop using it, so AI might stop using it, so I can use it again.
Well, turns out I have not always been using it. See, there’s different dashes and due to my personal inconsistency and a plethora of text editors, different dashes have appeared in my writing over the years. The one I used most is the hyphen (-). This mark should actually be used (among other things) to connect compound words, like open-source, or for prefixes and suffixes, like co-founder and secretary-general.
The second one I’ve used is an En dash (–). This one is slightly longer and should be used in ranges, like 1984–2026.
And then there’s the actual Em dash (—), the longest one of the bunch (that’s what she said). This one is for interruption, emphasis, and asides. The dash with the AI connection. Called an em dash, by the way, because it’s usually roughly the width of the letter M. Wanna guess how the en dash got its name? Anyway, the em dash is the one that should be used — as you might have expected — for things like this.
Now there are two styles. Spaced and unspaced. The American style uses no spaces, so this is an example—or an attempt at one—of the American style. The other one is the British or European version. This one adds a space on either side of the dash, which seems to be the version AI — or at least any AI I’ve seen — prefer to use. That was the example as well, in case you missed it. I’ve used the European version pretty universally in my writing.
So—that was a long-ass explanation of how to use dashes and calling myself out for not doing it correctly. So what was the point of this? Well — I think it’s high time I decided on which I am going to be using on this website. A style guide for my personal writing, if you will.
After a lot of back-and-forth with myself, I’ve finally decided and landed on—drumroll please—the actual em dash, written in the American way. There’s something about the way the dashed content is kebabed inside the sentence it’s interrupting. It feels more connected. More part of the whole. I also prefer the tightness of it. Not leaving so much blank space feels right to me.
My site is small enough to go back through all my posts and make older posts adhere to the new styling rule. And like magic—it has already happened. You never even noticed.
So, regardless of whether people think AI was used to write this blog, I am going with the em dash. Honestly, I don’t care if anyone thinks I used AI. Nope. Don’t care. I care so little, I wrote two posts on the subject.
