How to Handle Em Dash Warriors
In many ways, social media has been great for authors. It brings more eyes to new books and has inspired a new generation of readers to experience these works.
However, there are ways in which social media has hindered authors’ creativity and style. The one we’re going to discuss in this article is the war on em dashes.
Why did it happen?
As AI has had a greater impact on the world, it has become increasingly common for writers to use it in various aspects of their process (whether that’s good or bad is your opinion).
What started as minor has now become an issue, as it has opened up a place for people to create “books” with no effort or even ideas in mind.
It has also allowed individuals to steal the work of others and feed it into generators to create similar content with, arguably, lower readability and subpar plots.
As readers have begun to associate signs of the use of AI, they’ve decided that the em dash is the biggest indicator. They’ve made their picket signs, grabbed their pitchforks, and started their march.
But isn’t the em dash common in AI?
Yes, it is.
But that doesn’t mean the use of an em dash is a telltale sign that an author used AI. That punctuation was used long before artificial intelligence was even a thought.
In modern day, it can be argued that the density of em dashes could be the best indicator of whether the author used AI. But, even then, there are books created before this witch hunt that had a high density of this now hunted punctation.
What should authors do?
Every author is different in how they interact with readers, and those of you who haven’t finished your book yet may be steering clear of em dashes.
Our advice? Don’t change your book because of an uninformed opinion.
In fact, embrace it.
We like to tell people that if you are taking creative liberties in your book that may cause negative discourse later on, post about it. If you can show you are a real person writing a real book and can share why you are making the choices you’re making, it’s often more palatable to more readers.
Sure, you’ll still have to deal with uneducated opinions, but at least you can defend your choices in your own space.
Previously, writers had little ability to do that, at least on the scale we do now.
Moral of the story…
Em dashes are neither good nor bad. It’s unfortunate that they are being vilified when they are a perfectly acceptable punctuation.
That doesn’t mean we writers should cave to societal pressure over something as minor as an em dash.
Show your support for em dashes with our t-shirts and hoodies.
