Em-dashes, Sterne, Olivier, and the Futility of Punctuation Policing

The LinkedIn Theory of the Em-dash "Tell"

LinkedIn posts like this have been making the rounds all week:

The easiest way to tell someone used ChatGPT?

The long dash... "—" this thing.

Not the regular dash (-) you tap on your keyboard.

“Success isn’t a destination—it’s a mindset—and mindset is everything.”

See how the ‘—i’ is just jammed in there? No breathing room. That’s not human. That’s ChatGPT writing your companies Q4 review.

You see one? Suspicious....

You see five in a paragraph? ChatGPT wrote it—guaranteed.

Bonus points if the post is 42 paragraphs long and sounds like a college essay written at 2am by someone who read zero pages of the book.

AI is great, I use it every hour. But the "—"? That’s its fingerprint.

Bringing 1759 Into the Conversation

I rarely reply on LinkedIn, but this time I had to:

You nailed it, this has been a problem since the advent of Quill AI in 1759:

“—That he consists as we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humours, and articulations;—is a Being of as much activity,—and in all senses of the word, as much and as truly our fellow-creature as my Lord Chancellor of England.—He may be benefitted,—he may be injured,—he may obtain redress…”

That’s a little bit from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, 1759. I read it ages ago and it changed the way I write – I loved the em-dashes, the perfect way to break up a paragraph, indicate pauses, and so much more. I learned the em dash from Sterne and it served me well in college and law school and even [much] better writing dialogue. Em-dashes are part of the rhythm of good writing, not a glitch. Used right, it’s a breath, a jolt, a splice — sometimes all in the same sentence.

Today’s “Tells” Will Be Forgotten Tomorrow

It's em-dashes this week, it’ll be – should be – starting sentences with a conjunction next or adding an unnecessary preamble to a sentence which would have been fine [read: better] without it or another ‘sure tell’ next.

A lot of the commentators on these posts go on and on lamenting the loss of one of their writing tools. “Oh, woe is me, I can no longer use em-dashes for I will be taken for a machine!”

Hoffman, Olivier, and the “Just Try Writing” Principle

There’s a story from the filming of Marathon Man: during the famous Nazi dentist/monster meets graduate history student ‘Is it safe?” scene, Laurence Olivier watched a miserable Dustin Hoffman beating himself up over a few early takes before asking him, “What was going on with you?”

Hoffman, even then infamous for his immersive technique, went on about needing to feel the part and not sleeping for days to prepare. Olivier took in his 3-day stubble, red-rimmed eyes, profuse sweating and commented, “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”

Here's the thing (oh, wait, is here the thing AI now or …) Dustin Hoffman stayed up for 72-hours so he looked and acted suitably miserable. Laurence Olivier prepared by reading the script and showing up on time for filming. Hoffman is a great actor, Olivier may well have been the greatest actor. They were both great in an amazing, iconic scene. How they did it doesn’t matter, it worked.

The Takeaway

So …why don’t we all just try writing?