The em dash dilemma—and a rallying cry

There's been a lot of talk lately about how any piece of writing that includes the em dash must have been created by AI.

Even worse, I’ve heard that some writers are deliberately changing their style—removing the em dash—in order to avoid accusations. It’s a literary tragedy but from the wrong side of the page. 

Charles Dickens used em dashes. 
Shakespeare, Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, and William Faulkner did too. 
Emily Dickinson used the em dash so often, in fact, that some people believe it was named after her.

Grab any random book from your bookshelf, flip a few pages, and you’ll see:
Life of Pi has em dashes.
Little Women has em dashes.
The Woman in Cabin 10 has em dashes.
Project Hail Mary has em dashes, as do all of Tolkien’s tales about Middle Earth.
Harry Potter—all of them—has em dashes.
My collection of beach reads—Jennifer Weiner, Elin Hilderbrand, and Emily Giffin, to name a few—is full of em dashes. And plenty of ellipses. (One has to wonder … could those be next?)

Writers, if we change our natural style each time AI mimics it, we’ll eventually have nothing left. 
No em dashes. 
No ellipses. 
Entire rhythms and tones and voices erased from human creation and replaced by an artificial intelligence that WE TAUGHT. 
Alliteration and hyperbole fading faster than you can blink. 
Simile swept away like a leaf in the wind. 
Perhaps we’ll finally settle the great serial comma debate … but only because IT picks a side. What an arbitrary, undignified, and anticlimactic way to die. 

And after each loss, we’ll be left wondering what’s next.

So stay strong, wordsmiths. Remain true to the natural flow of your fingertips on the keys and celebrate as your vision pours onto the page. It’s entirely on us if we let this next era alter the way we express our craft. Do NOT censor what feels right to you simply because AI uses it too. 

The em dash is just the first test of many. Let’s save it. It’s been good to us.

Final Note:
Writers, if you use AI for ANYTHING (decorating, counseling, research, etc), PLEASE adjust your settings so it doesn’t learn to write like you. Here are the instructions as collected via Google AI—straight from the source.
• ChatGPT: Settings → Data Controls → Improve Model for Everyone = OFF
• Gemini: Settings → Activity → Gemini Activity = OFF
• Copilot: Microsoft’s Copilot Privacy Settings → Data/Voice Logging = OFF
• LinkedIn: Settings & Privacy → Data Privacy → Data for Generative AI Improvement = OFF