For most writers, the em dash is a trusted stylistic tool — versatile, expressive, and a little rebellious. It slides into sentences like a jack-of-all-trades, standing in for commas, parentheses, or colons. It helps frame thoughts, add dramatic flair, and break the fourth wall of formal writing. But now, it’s doing something else entirely: allegedly exposing AI-generated text.
Gen Z internet sleuths and TikTok-era writers have dubbed the em dash the “ChatGPT hyphen,” and the nickname is catching on faster than a typo in a group chat. This…