On November 14, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, posted on social media, “Small-but-happy win: If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it's supposed to do!

As an author, I love the em dash — that lovely little diversion from the main idea — but I never meant for it to go viral via chatbot.

Let’s talk about the em dash. Not the little innocent hyphen, not its slightly more confident cousin, the en dash. No, I’m talking about the 'EM dash,' that long, dramatic line that AI looooooves to ...

Ah, the em dash. No matter if you’re a novice writer or a seasoned one, you’re likely more than familiar with this ...

It’s rare that a punctuation mark becomes grist for the online rumor mill. But recently, an uptick in focus on AI and its impacts has brought a Blake Lively-esque level of attention to the em dash, ...

It seems a day does not go by without seeing someone confidently assert on social media that an em dash is not an indicator of AI-written text. Those social media posts are in response to an ongoing ...

Gwen Egan is a digital producer at Globe Opinion. AI writing is everywhere — emails, college essays, even wedding vows — and it’s becoming increasingly important to be able to detect when a piece of ...

The em dash has long been a favorite punctuation mark of writers everywhere. This lengthier dash can replace a comma or a colon. It’s also sometimes used to sum up info at the end of the sentence, to ...

The extra-long hyphen known as the em dash is common in AI-generated text. While some writers have responded by choosing to avoid the punctuation mark, others are fighting back. If you're reading ...

A version of this column first appeared in Stephinitely, a weekly newsletter from columnist Stephanie Hayes featuring a bonus column and behind-the-scenes chatter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.