The em dash has become a symbol of our humanity, and you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.
It’s a Spicy 🌶️ Friday post. And it’s not about the em dash. It’s about artist agency.
I’ve recently read two posts that deeply saddened me and added to my concern about what AI is doing to us.
One was posted here by a writer and marketing specialist. She said she had written a post in her own voice, but because she used an em dash someone accused her of using AI to write it. Now, whenever she writes, she finds herself going over it again and again out of concern that it sounds like AI. She’ll strip out her own unique style–which includes em dashes–to the point where her writing isn’t in her authentic voice. Ironically, it ends up sounding like AI.
Nearly every one of the 300 comments was a writer saying the same thing: “I can’t write in my authentic voice because my authentic voice is now co-opted by AI.”
Let me point out here that AI is trained on writing style by …. wait for it … real, good, human writing. And now we’re not supposed to use that style because it’s used by AI? The mind wobbles.
The second post was on Substack by a guy who shares tips on how to use AI, specifically Claude. I’ve definitely gotten value from his writing. I do use AI, and Claude is very helpful to me in a number of ways in my work.
This post was about how to put together an “anti-AI style guide” for your AI to use. Of course, one of the rules was “Do not use em dashes.”
I pushed back with the premise that writers shouldn’t be told they can’t write as they’ve always written. He said “We have to adapt the way we write as humans.” I’m sorry, what?
I responded:
“I say bullsh*t. Next it’s semicolons and commas and periods and then any punctuation and then conjunctions and verbs and nouns and and and … and then hell, why write at all? Oops, are those ellipses an AI signal now? If we aren’t willing or able to apply critical thinking to ascertain what is authentic, and have turned over our perceptive abilities to machines…we are lazy. THAT is how we lose our humanity. That is far scarier to me than someone thinking my writing is AI because I used an em dash.”
This feels like a slippery slope. Will we tell painters they can’t use a certain palette, photographers a certain composition, composers a certain chord structure because “AI uses it”?
I’m not saying don’t use AI to write (although AI slop is real). I use it to copy edit and help with brevity (although obviously not here).
I’m saying don’t tell artists what they can and can’t do because AI has “learned” from their practices.
When we take agency away from artists because their unique approaches have been co-opted by a machine, where do we go from there?
And as for my writing, I’ll continue to use my beloved em dash. If you want to discount it as AI-written, that’s on you.
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