It’s the Em of the World

Now that AI has claimed the em dash, we look for a signifier of more human hesitation.

In the em dash wars, ChatGPT is winning — one machine-generated clause at a time. Professional human writers find themselves forced to take a side: pro-em, or anti-em. It is quite ridiculous.

(The “em dash” is the long “ — ” pause in the middle of a sentence. It gets its name from the width of the letter “M,” vs. the narrower one-hump “en” dash.)

Sadly, the current typographic palette does not offer many alternatives to the venerable em. The en dash is a different beast entirely, and neither ellipses nor commas do the same job.

What if we had other options that were looser, or more suited to modern ambiguity?

Here are a few.

Here on Caller Calls Back, I write about the etiquette of technology-mediated communication. If you are looking for editorial thinking with precision and purpose, visit me at Catchphrase Publishing.