The Em Dash - 99% Invisible

"Vance, a Portland-based journalist who runs Stumptown Savings, a newsletter covering local grocery deals, had been accused of using ChatGPT to write his content. The evidence? His use of em dashes. "A Reddit user accused me of using AI, pointing to my use of, quote, extra long M dashes that are not possible to replicate on a normal keyboard," Vance recalls. The accusation stung, particularly because Vance spends 40 hours a week personally visiting grocery stores and crafting his newsletter by hand."

"The em dash gets its name from its width, roughly equivalent to a capital M. Its origins trace back to 11th century Italy and a scholar named Boncompagno da Signa, who practiced the formal art of composing letters and documents. Frustrated with the inconsistent punctuation rules of his time, he created his own system, including a horizontal dash called Virgula Plana that looked exactly like a modern em dash."

Bryan Vance, a Portland journalist who runs Stumptown Savings, was accused on Reddit of using ChatGPT because of his use of long em dashes. The em dash originated in 11th-century Italy with Boncompagno da Signa, who devised a horizontal dash called Virgula Plana as part of a personal punctuation system. The dash did not become a fixed mark but adapted through the printing era due to grammatical flexibility. Playwrights in the 16th and 17th centuries, including Shakespeare, used the dash to indicate pauses, interruptions, and mid-speech realizations. The em dash's name derives from its width, roughly that of a capital M.

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