99% Invisible · February 3, 2026 · 39m 22s

The Em Dash

Roman Mars traces the strange career of the em dash — a punctuation mark once prized for making writing feel loose, conversational, and unmistakably human. He explores how that very warmth has now flipped, as its frequent appearance in AI-generated text has turned the em dash into a potential red flag for machine authorship.

This summary was generated from show notes and public descriptions, not from a full transcript review. Details may contain inaccuracies.

Highlights

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The Em Dash as a Humanizing Punctuation Mark

For generations, the em dash has been used to make writing feel more human by mimicking the rhythms, interruptions, and asides of natural speech.

Claude ChatGPT Gemini

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The Em Dash as a Marker of AI-Generated Text

Today, the very same punctuation mark that once signaled human warmth is increasingly viewed as a sign that a text was written by large language models.

Claude ChatGPT Gemini

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