The other day, I read an article by an English teacher claiming they can identify AI in student papers by their use of the em dash.
And honestly? That pissed me off.
It reminds me of every gatekeeper I’ve met in my career: from professors to managers, and other writers. I still hold a grudge against my first manager—being Miss Midvale of 1960-whatever was her flex—and she had the most antiquated ideas about writing. We worked at a company that made logistics software. If you ever read a user manual from the 90s, she was the type of person that edited it. Because she wasn’t a writer. She was an editor. She took cribbed notes from the devs and edited them into incomprehensible volumes—documents that did nothing to curb the help call queue. That was my problem too: I was the SME the call center called when the call center couldn’t understand the documentation.
I—on the other hand—would go to the devs and ask what the hell they were talking about when documenting whatever and I knew slightly more than the end user, so I hope you get my point. I worked with QA to see behavior. I broke shit just by asking, “What if the user did this?” It was outrageous for the time, but common practice now. I remember once telling Miss Midvale about this great new product that could change everything: Adobe Illustrator. She got mad and complained she didn’t want to have to learn new software. It was the iterative, “We have Corel Draw at home!”
It still makes me mad.
Anyway…
I use the em dash all the time. Not to sound smart. Not to mimic a machine. But because it adds substance. It gives my writing space to breathe—and lets me dodge the kind of wheezy, over-comma’d cadence that sounds like an asthmatic giving a book report or, worse, Captain Kirk attempting slam poetry.
Sure, I love punchy lines and short-form grit when I’m aiming for mass appeal. But if you’ve ever talked to me for more than three minutes—about anything deeper than the weather—you know I’ve got something to say. Hell, even if you’re not talking to me, I might have something to say.
The truth is, I like long sentences. I like nuance. I like parenthetical quotes—back alleys, rabbit holes, and deep dives—without the clutter of unnecessary commas. Because commas don’t play nice with complex series. And because the em dash lets me carve out side notes without losing the thread.
Life is hard. Writing shouldn’t be.
Let’s take back the em dash!
And while we’re at it? You wanna come for my semicolon too? Go ahead. Try me. You will have to pry it from my cold, dead hand.
Because—in short—if you’re learning to write well, you should throw all the punctuation in; toss it around like seasoning until the flavor starts to make sense. Until you feel where it snaps, where it flows, where it hits.
Just wait until you see the interrobang. Yeah, that’s real. You’re not ready.
Anyway, when to unleash the em dash: when parentheses feel too timid and commas too polite; when your sentence takes a hard left and the reader needs to feel it; when you toss in a side note and want it to hit, not hide; when you’re building to a punchline and the dash is your windup; when a colon feels too academic and you need drama, not a textbook; when dialogue breaks mid-thought—or thought breaks mid-dialogue; when commas start wheezing and gasping for air; when the sentence runs long, the thought runs deeper, and only the em dash can carry the weight without breaking stride.
To add an em dash to your day-to-day, just hit Alt + 0151—or, if you’re on a mobile device, copy it off Wikipedia like a normal person.
Weirdo.
Chris Snoke 