AI didn't kill writing – we did

The em dash used to signal style. Now it’s a red flag. A writer reflects on the uses and abuses of AI, authorship and the loss of literary flair

- Sabelo Mkhabela

Being a grammar snob is so 2012 but I'm probably not alone in this one. Seeing the em dash (—) go mainstream wasn’t on the cards for many years. But now, it’s everywhere, tucked into every second article, LinkedIn sermon and long-form X post that wants to sound groundbreaking but falls flat.

It wasn’t always like this. Outside of yellowing novel pages, em dashes, especially those without spaces on either side, were prevalent in prestige American texts. They belonged in literary-leaning publications like The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Pitchfork... publications with writers and editors who know how to break rhythm with elegance for a readership that gets it.

Now the em dash has gone corporate. The issue is not that it’s going mainstream, but how it’s being used.

Blame the machine

It’s ChatGPT’s fault. And that of all other large language models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok. For better or worse, LLMs are widely used in writing today. But, while they can assist, most LLM-generated text lacks that personal touch. It reads broad and glossy. Emotionally neutral and safe.

You can often tell when a piece of writing has been LLM generated, not just by its tone, but by its punctuation. The em dash appears like a glitch in the code, levitating where a comma, semicolon, colon or even just a space would've worked better. It’s like narrative duct tape — functional but overused.

And yet, humans are letting it slide. Or worse, they are copying the style without realising why.

The popularity of AI in SA

ChatGPT is the fifth-most visited website in South Africa, after Google, YouTube, Facebook and, sadly, Hollywoodbets. Globally, it received 4.7 billion visits in April alone, up 51% from just two months earlier. In the AI search space, ChatGPT now commands over 80% of the traffic.