How did we get here? How did the simple em dash become the official stamp of mighty Artificial Intelligence? Use just one em dash and the AI Detectives show up like, “You’re busted, Bot!”

Relax, Columbo. It’s punctuation, not a smoking gun.

Yes, generative AI has absolutely glitter-bombed the entire internet with em dashes. They’re everywhere. AI can’t resist them. It sprinkles them into web copy the way Oprah gave away cars. “YOU get an em dash. YOU get an em dash. EVERYBODY gets an em dash.”

But here’s the thing: I actually like the em dash. I was using it before it was the pariah of punctuation, and I hate that I have stopped using it in fear of being accused of (gasp!) using AI to help me write blog posts. I’ve got news for ya—every blog post you’ve read this year has been touched by a bot.

The Solution (at least on this website)

I have decided that I’m not giving up the em dash. However, I want it to be clear that this is a decision, not poor prompting. Starting today, every em dash on my site is now clickable, Click one, and you’ll land right here, where I confirm—clearly and unapologetically—that I wrote (or, at least, condoned) that em dash with my very own organic brain cells. I see “Certified Human Intelligence” being a label by 2035. 

Think of this as a provenance certificate, but for punctuation. “This em dash is free-range, ethically sourced, and crafted by a live human who probably tried three different key combinations before remembering that it’s option+shift+hyphen.”

This whole post should stand to prove at least one thing: only a human would be petty enough to set up a secret trapdoor for punctuation skeptics. And honestly, that might be one of the most convincing Turing tests ever.