I had heard about this, but did not imagine I would encounter it from a highly literate, educated person. How naïf I can be.

All right. Time to stand our ground.

The word on the editorial street is that some people have decided the em dash* (the longest dash we use; —) is associated with AI writing. It seems some fairly non-thinking people have darted from  basic notice of that computer-generated habit to: “OMG never use an em dash, or they’ll think you used AI.”

Poppycock, horseshit, baloney, and a load of crap. Furthermore, the stance of a writer showing minimal confidence in their craft.

Details:

1. While I will go to war with cheerful ruthlessness to eradicate overuse of the em dash, it’s a valid and useful part of the language. I will not stand still while people throw it away because they heard that someone who doesn’t know much about writing might think negative things about their writing because they saw an em dash. No. Stand up and fight. You are ceding this ground to AI, which is not a person and has no rights.
2. Who so greatly cares about fairly slow people’s evaluations of their writing that they will trash a helpful device just in case the slow people might think a naughty thought about them? Don’t spend so much time caring what knee-jerk critics have to say. Spend more time caring how well you are communicating with your chosen audience. (Although I guess that if your audience is dumb, maybe you better abjure the symbol so you don’t act upon them like the doctor’s little rubber hammer.)
3. AI will evolve, improve. Think its makers haven’t heard about the em dash hyperdependence tell? Perhaps you underestimate them. It won’t be this way for long. While they are busy trying to make AI writing less stupid—and we can expect them to succeed by degrees—they’ll also start throttling back the tells. The em dash will be among them. Em dashes were not invented by AI; they were here long before the computer.
4. If you write better than AI, it follows that people will realize you wrote it yourself and have some modest chops.

This sort of little ad hoc rule is no more than another form of conformity. Not a fan. All my life I have watched herds of non-thinking people let the world dictate to them the obligatory current views. The thinking people didn’t ask anyone’s permission to have viewpoints, nor did they ask for approval except perhaps from their educational and intellectual peers. I have seen fad after fad, trend after trend, come and go and fade into memory. All represented voluntary conformity for the sake of conformity, which is perhaps the filthiest language I have used in a month.

Nonconformism neen’t be stupid. Conform because a conforming act makes independent sense? Certainly. Conform because power has a weapon pointed at you? Very well; they can order you to obey but they can’t have your soul. Conform because you need to keep a job? Fine; work isn’t a place to be yourself, and one is a fool or a saint to think so. But conform for the sake of wanting to be like others, to receive gang approval, strokes from bullies who would be gutless without someone to tell them what they think? Give away your soul for the sake of a fickle approbation? Throw away a useful piece of punctuation for fear of what others might think?

Not sure whether I react more with contempt or pity.

Now let’s edit/writing coach like we mean it. Em dashes are a useful part of the language. Used in excess, they are bad writing, a lazy crutch to avoid recasts. The same is true of ellipses, italicized emphasis, adverbs, passive voice and other deprecated-but-not-rejected options that too easily become bad habits. Be judicious, save the tool for when it pays its way, and you are in control of your writing. Be lazy—use the tool because it’s so much easier than quality writing—and you’ll hear about it the first time you show your work to a competent editor.

If you want to stress over something related to AI, try focusing the energy on being a better writer than an algorithm. That’s more productive than placating people who don’t write as well as does an algorithm.

*Why the hell are we calling it that? The em dash is so called for typesetting reasons that no longer bear resemblance to the way contemporary printing occurs. It’s supposed to be the width of an m; the en dash an n, and the hyphen: —, –, -.