Note: TMF recently made a policy decision to stop using the em dash due to its association with GPTs so, we decided to have a little fun saying goodbye. Enjoy!

Oh, em dash. My darling. My weapon of choice—my sly interrupter, my dramatic pause, my verbal eyebrow raise. How I adored you. You weren’t just punctuation—you were panache. While the semicolon fretted over its formalities and the ellipsis trailed off into uncertainty, you stood bold—nay, audacious. 

You could break up a sentence effortlessly, like a burly bouncer separating two brawling drunks. Read aloud, you hung in the air like one of Matlock’s closing arguments, listeners waiting breathlessly for the inevitable brilliant conclusion. You were unparalleled.

But I’m afraid…we’re through.

I thought we had something special. Where others shied away in favor of more tepid punctuation, I knew how to make you shine. You were rare, precious—and together, we were unstoppable. 

Then I started seeing you everywhere. With everyone. Indiscriminately. You became the Walton Goggins of punctuation. I suppose I could have lived with that; after all, there are millions of writers out there, but only fourteen punctuation marks. You felt like you were mine, but in my heart I knew there had to be others. I was—grudgingly—willing to share you with other people. If only it were just other people. 

Because human hands are no longer all that beckon you forth. With your sleek elegance, your drama, you’ve become ChatGPT’s signature move. And now, every time you appear in my writing, people get suspicious.

“Oh,” they say, squinting. “Did you write this? Or did the machine?”

Reader, I wrote it. I lived that em dash. I bled that pause.

But now? Your once-electric jolt no longer sizzles; it fizzles, reading like a watermark from our robot overlords. I might as well sign my pieces, “Generated by AI.”

It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, I was praised for my flair. My writing had, how you say, “voice.” People said things like, “You have such a unique style.” And what they meant—though perhaps they didn’t know it—was that I knew how to wield you, dear em dash, with care and precision. Not too often. Just enough. Like a good swear word or an unexpected sprinkle of cilantro—attention-getting, if not to everyone’s taste.

And then the bots came.

At first, it was subtle. A few extra dashes here and there in their auto-generated blurbs, their too-chipper marketing emails, their eerily polite blog posts. But soon, you were ubiquitous—every brand, every essay, every intern trying to sound clever. It became clear: ChatGPT loved the em dash, and ChatGPT would not be restrained.

You became—how can I put this gently?—cringe.

You know what it’s like? It’s like when your favorite underground band gets picked up for a car commercial, and suddenly your uncle’s humming the chorus. Or when cargo shorts went from practical to pariah. Or how calling someone “bae” tipped over from sweet to nauseating in roughly two weeks.

I can’t blame you for seizing your time in the spotlight. ChatGPT offered you the kind of exposure that I couldn’t have dreamed of. Everyone knows you now—but look at what it’s cost you. You’ve become the literary equivalent of a TikTok dance at a funeral—once daring, now deeply misread.

So you understand why I’ve had to pull away, start seeing others. Commas, colons, parentheses. The occasional ellipsis. I’ve even—God forgive me—resorted to breaking up sentences entirely. Full stops. Short fragments. Hemingway would be proud. Or horrified. Hard to say.

Sometimes, typing away late at night, I can’t resist turning to you. Just one little em dash—just a taste. I tell myself no one will notice. But I notice. And then I wonder: did that sentence feel like me, or did it just feel…auto-generated?

So this is my bittersweet goodbye. Not because I stopped loving you, but because the world no longer believes that I loved you first. You’re no longer my signature. You’re everyone’s filler.

Who knows—maybe someday, when the spotlight has moved on and you find yourself in the shadows, we’ll meet again. You’ll be retro then, like vinyl or chunky highlights. Maybe you’ll be underground. Cool. Niche. Used only by those who truly get it.

Until then, I’ll be here, writing like a human, one reluctant comma at a time.

—A Former Dash Devotee at The Modern Firm