How the (Em)ighty Have Fallen—

How the (Em)ighty Have Fallen—<br>My obsession with the em dash, and how I'm using it in my writing in the LLM-era.Posted on 2026-03-29:: life ai

Machine maketh the em<br>The em dash—heavily stigmatized as a hallmark of LLMs like ChatGPT—has suddenly become the most heavily scrutinized punctuation mark on the internet. It is not, however, a recent invention, tracing its roots back to the printing press of the 15th century.As the printing press made the written word accessible to the masses, replacing painstakingly hand-copied manuscripts, a new visual syntax was required.<br>Printers needed a way to visually signify a sudden break in thought, a dialogue shift, or an interruption that a comma simply could not bear. The em dash was born out of pure mechanical necessity.There is bitter irony here. The punctuation mark born during the first era of literary automation is now being killed by the latest one. Today, the widespread usage of LLMs forces me to systematically erase it from my own drafts just to avoid the dreaded label of "AI slop"—a label that would immediately render the actual content of my writing meaningless.Formative suspensions<br>Growing up, I was a voracious reader. I still remember coming home in the first grade one day to find that my dad had brought me back a massive encyclopedia from one of his business trips. By the fourth or the fifth grade, my taste had expanded from facts covered in encyclopedias and into the mysteries of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.As I continued to dabble in new niches, I stumbled upon the — character. This, to me, was a fascinating language mechanic, not often seen but always elegant—and flexible—in its usage. "How fascinating", I remember thinking, once I started to take notice of it.And so, this elder cousin to the hyphen—whose name I would not learn for years to come—became an obsession.The imitation game<br>I learnt the craft of writing primarily by reading voraciously, attempting to mentally capture a frame of reference for the passages I found elegant, and then recreating that feel in my homework, assignments, and the occasional short story or diary entry.<br>This practice yielded some recognition and helped me win a few writing competitions in school—most notably a rank of around 1150 in an International English Olympiad when I was 15.All I did then—and what I still attempt to do in my day job today—is emulate the authors I admire. Nowadays, my reading material largely consists of technical blogs or documentation material.<br>The practice of absorbing and replicating the rhythm of good technical writing is serving me well. I certainly cannot replicate James Clavell's rich, detailed prose that flows effortlessly across entire chapters, making you want to be a part of the world he cast so vividly.I have reread the ending of Shogun twice within a year of finishing the novel, and what I wouldn't give to forget the narrative to be able to go and experience it afresh.<br>However, as a saving grace, I can at least imitate that sublime language for my internal monologues.Yet, this very essay is an anomaly. I have not undertaken a written, reflective commentary like this in ages. The last time I wrote something along these lines—rather than merely thinking it—was two or three years ago in a briefly maintained personal diary. Here, I am not trying to optimize for readability scores or technical precision.I am mostly trying to let the words—and as is apparent, the em dashes—flow exactly as they come (with intense revising, of course; I am not fooling anyone).C for comma, and compromise<br>To clarify, I have been purposefully liberal with my usage of the em dash in this piece—where else would I use it with carefree abandon if not here? I primarily use it to “expand” a topic, injecting sudden, additional context into the current narrative thread.But for my technical blogs today, I have to be cautious in how I use it. I flatten my sentences, relying on the unassuming comma to do the heavy lifting. I typically begin sprinkling em dashes throughout my text only after the initial few paragraphs, by which point the reader is (hopefully) invested enough, and fully convinced that a human actually wrote the piece, and not a bot.To be clear, this isn't a rejection of the technology itself. I actively rely on AI for content review, validating logical correctness, and automating scoped changes to content that I am taking stewardship of. Not doing so would mean losing out on a tool that is exceedingly beneficial when engaged with productively.And so, for me now—as someone whose primary goal is to share knowledge clearly and build trust without distraction—the (em)ighty have fallen . The landscape of writing has shifted, the algorithms have claimed my favourite punctuation mark, and there is little I can do about it.