99% Invisible – "The Em Dash"

Host: Roman Mars
Episode Date: February 3, 2026
Summary by Podcast Summarizer

Overview

In "The Em Dash," 99% Invisible explores the fascinating story of a once-overlooked punctuation mark that has influenced written language for centuries: the em dash. Through interviews with writers, historians, and typographers, the episode traces the em dash’s origins, its rise (and occasional fall) in literary esteem, and its sudden entanglement in modern debates over artificial intelligence, authorship, and authenticity—culminating in new, creative responses to the “AI dash problem.”

Major Themes & Purpose

• Design legacy: Even something as small as a punctuation mark carries deep design legacies and cultural meanings often unnoticed—until controversy or technology brings them to the foreground.
• Literary and social history: The em dash’s journey from ancient manuscripts, through the golden age of novels and poetry, to a misunderstood “AI tell” in digital writing.
• Human vs Machine: How the em dash became a battleground in the contest over what “feels” human or artificial in our writing, and how designers and writers are responding.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reddit Drama: The Human vs. AI Em Dash

[01:17–04:35]

• Brian Vance, Portland journalist and creator of Stumptown Savings, is accused on Reddit of using AI (ChatGPT) to write his newsletter—solely because it features “extra-long EM dashes.”
  • Quote: “A Reddit user accused me of using AI, pointing to my use of quote, quote, extra long EM dashes that are not possible to replicate on a normal keyboard, end quote. So anyone who uses an EM dash must be using AI, and that's just not the case.” (Brian Vance, [03:07])
• The em dash—a longstanding punctuation choice for dramatic effect or clarity—suddenly becomes an unlikely signal for machine authorship.

2. The Em Dash: Origins & Evolution

[05:03–10:01]

• Keith Houston, author of Shady: The Secret Life of Punctuation, recounts the em dash’s murky beginnings in medieval Italy:
  • 13th-century scholar Boncompagno da Signa ("Bonnie") devises early marks: one evolves into the comma; another, a “horizontal dash,” resembles our modern em dash—but is slow to catch on.
  • Quote: “For whatever reason, he chose this very simple system... That looks exactly like a modern N or M dash.” (Keith Houston, [07:10])
• Literary experimentation in 16th–17th century theater (Shakespeare et al.) gives the dash new expressive roles: pauses, broken speech, dramatic interjections.

3. The Dash as Signature – Fiction, Realism & Rebellion

[10:01–16:01]

• The rise of the novel transforms the dash into a device for capturing the rhythms of natural speech and thought.
  • Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne, 1759) is held up as a classic “dash-mad” narrative, using the mark to emulate “stream of consciousness.”
  • Jane Austen strategically censors sensitive details with dashes (“adding the spice of factualness to an otherwise fictional story” [13:04–13:21]).
  • Quote: “So you might see someone's name, you might see the first letter of their name, followed by a few dashes.” (Keith Houston, [13:21])

4. Dash Masters: Poets & Punctuation Wars

[16:01–23:39]

• Emily Dickinson uses em dashes as a tool of ambiguity, quickness, and “unfinishedness”—leaving poems perpetually open and unsettled.
  • Quote: “She exploited unfinishedness... always undecided and always in the process of making and kind of never finished. And in that story, the dash and that suspendedness... is part of the unfinishedness of the poem.” (Fiona Green, [18:00])
  • Academic debates ensue over the true intent and musicality of Dickinson’s use of the dash, especially after editors removed most dashes posthumously.
• Grammar purists (from Jonathan Swift in the 18th century to the Chicago Manual of Style today) have often regarded the em dash with suspicion, advocating restraint.
  • Quote: “If in doubt, edit them out.” (Chicago Manual of Style, paraphrased, [22:45])

5. Modern Backlash: From Literary Flair to “ChatGPT Hyphen”

[23:39–29:45]

• Modern editorial and reader suspicion toward the em dash peaks as AI-written text, notably from LLMs (Large Language Models), is identified by its enthusiastic use of the mark.
  • Social media derides the “ChatGPT hyphen”; younger generations see excessive dashes as symptomatic of formulaic machine writing.
  • Quote: “This mark that was so heavily relied upon by the likes of Charlotte Bronte and Emily Dickinson is now being referred to as the ChatGPT hyphen.” (Will Aspinall, [25:32])
• Investigations show that LLMs began over-using the em dash after models were retrained extensively on massive datasets of 19th-century literary texts (which feature dash-heavy prose), thanks in part to “destructive scanning” of physical books (Anthropic lawsuit revelations, [28:12]).

6. Tech Industry Response & Ongoing Debate

[29:45–31:56]

• Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) semi-jokingly claims extra dashes are “for LOLs” and user demand, but admits overuse is an unintended side effect ([26:07–26:30]).
• Sean Gedeke (AI industry insider) suggests the sudden spike is due to LLMs’ ravenous ingestion of classic print literature—where em dashes are everywhere ([26:41–28:25]).
• The episode warns against seeing any punctuation habit as a “smoking gun” for AI writing.
  • Quote: “It is, of course, reductive to assume any bit of writing that contains an EM dash was written by AI. In fact, the reason why LLMs add EM dashes to generated text is because it's a mark that we have used for literally hundreds of years in published writing, at least for now.” (Will Aspinall, [29:30])

7. What We Lose With AI-Authored Texts

[30:25–31:40]

• Dr. Fiona Green (Dickinson scholar) argues the “hard parts” of writing—the moments of struggle, discovery, and self-transformation—are essential and should not be outsourced.
  • Quote: “Everything that you read can matter. Every rabbit hole that you accidentally go down matters... It's the process of learning that then sends you out as a different human.” (Fiona Green, [30:52])

8. A Creative Counterattack: The "Amdash" Typeface

[37:26–42:12]

• Post-story coda: Sydney agency Coco Gun responds to AI-induced dash paranoia with a design intervention: the Amdash, a visually distinctive dash with curved “serifs,” meant to signal proudly human authorship.
  • Download fonts “Times New Human” and “Ariel” to use it; typing “am-” inserts the mark.
  • Quote: “The idea is that you put one or more of these babies in your writing instead of an EM dash and you'll never be confused for a machine or be accused of using one because its very scarcity is what makes it AI proof.” (Will Aspinall, [38:19])
• Ant Melder (Coco Gun co-founder): “We wanted it to be rooted in a real love of writing... It just kind of really sucks that people would outsource all writing to... a machine...” ([39:15])
• The Amdash is not just an in-joke but a bid to reclaim the playfulness and signature of human design.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Brian Vance: “It's an odd thing to be a fan of an EM dash, but I am a fan of it... There's a group of people who understand it and appreciate it and really value its flexibility.” ([03:52])
• Keith Houston: “It allows you to do a kind of a U-turn within a sentence. I've heard it described as being useful for special effects...” ([15:32])
• Fiona Green: “She exploited unfinishedness... The poems are always in the process, always undecided and always in the process of making and kind of never finished.” ([18:00])
• Roman Mars: “...the dash has now passed from the hand of Shakespeare into the vast data centers of this new age.” ([29:21])
• Sam Altman: “A lot of users like EM dashes, so we added more EM dashes and now I think we have too many EM dashes. But that's the answer is it was just like users liked it, we put more in. Now it's like a little bit of a meme and it's kind of. It's quite annoying to me. We should fix that.” ([26:07])
• Ant Melder: “...the more it's used, every time someone uses it, that's kind of an example of, you know, that's another flag in the sand...” ([40:41])
• Fiona Green: Final reading, Dickinson's poem:

  “I felt a cleaving in my mind
  as if my brain had had split.
  I tried to match it seam by seam
  but could not make them fit...
  the thought behind. I strove to join
  unto the thought before, but sequence
  raveled out of sound like balls upon the floor.
  Isn't that wild?” ([32:33])

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:17–04:35] – Reddit accusation, AI paranoia, and the em dash
• [05:03–10:01] – Early history, medieval & Renaissance punctuation
• [10:01–16:01] – The dash in the novel, Tristram Shandy, Jane Austen
• [16:01–23:39] – Emily Dickinson, ambiguity, editorial battles
• [23:39–29:45] – AI era: overuse, suspicion, literary backlash
• [29:45–31:56] – Why LLMs picked up the dash; reflection on authorship
• [37:26–42:12] – The Amdash: design hack, fonts, human creativity in response to machine writing
• [32:33] – Poignant Dickinson reading (episode close)

Conclusion

This episode reclaims the em dash from its reductive role as an “AI giveaway,” revealing its rich, chaotic literary and design heritage—as a mark expressive, ambiguous, and defiantly human. From medieval manuscripts to AI-generated prose, the em dash’s journey mirrors our relationship with writing, technology, and the never-ending improvisation of meaning. The playful invention of the Amdash shows that in the battle for our linguistic soul, even a mustachioed dash can become a flag of creative resistance.

For those who haven’t listened, “The Em Dash” is a witty, deeply researched, and unexpectedly emotional exploration of how a humble piece of punctuation holds a mirror to how we write, think, and remain human in a world increasingly written by machines.

Episode reported by Will Aspinall and the 99PI team. For more: 99percentinvisible.org.