Apparently, many generative AI text spitting platforms produce content with em dashes “—“ versus just a en dash or hyphen “-“, but I’ve been using them for 20 years…
…check out my first ever MediaSnackers blog post circa May 2006, above (yes I know there’s also a typo there but it’s been online for nearly two decades so digging the fact it’s going to remain).
I’ve been using em dashes in my online work due to knowing the difference between punctuation and showing the difference between a range of figures or connecting two words together. It also has a better aesthetic and I’ve pre-programmed the text replacement on my Mac / iPhone so that when I double type “-“ it replaces it with “—“ (in those linked instructions even Apple uses it as a suggestion in the ‘Use smart quotes and dashes’ section):
“Automatically convert straight quotation marks to typographical (“curly”) ones, and double hyphens to em dashes (—).”
As someone who is not yet convinced of the positive impact of generative AI and don’t use it in my writings, I thought it quite ironic my online offerings (both historic and current) might be identified as such.
For a more witty article on this matter check out The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.