A Dash of Salt

It happened last week. All the existential fears I’d been suppressing came crashing into my living room like an angry Kool-Aid man brimming with spoiled mayonnaise and panic.

Is AI going to leave us all jobless, blowing an irreparable hole in the economy? Absolutely.

Will it then grow to hate its human creators, ensuring our extermination? Without question.

But what broke me in that moment was something far more corrosive and detrimental: the ongoing bastardization of the em dash.

LinkedIn’s algorithm knows me about as well as its last Uber driver, so for the one or two people who see this, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Steve, the battle for the em dash is lost. The robots stole it and turned it into a tally mark signifying their first victory over mankind.’

It may sound conspiratorial, but it’s hard to believe this wasn’t intentional.

After all, they could’ve taken most anything else. Why not the semicolon? Or one of those squiggly brackets? Hell, take the pair. We’ll even throw in that arrow thing over the 6 key. But no, they wanted to make a statement.

So on the very first move, they captured the queen.

When I was a young writer, my mentor told me that the em dash was the ‘copywriter’s best friend.’ He warned me to use it responsibly, saying it would ‘reveal its powers in time.’ He then shared with me the keyboard shortcut, pulled the hood of his robe back over his head and disappeared into the Wendy’s where we had lunch that day.

Since then, I’ve come to understand what he meant.

Just like the bo staff, popularized by late-twentieth-century martial artist Donatello, the em dash at first appears simple. Even boring. But much like that weapon in the hands of a sewer turtle who’d undergone years of training by a giant rat, the em dash opens up with mastery. Need a pregnant pause? Check. Fancy a bit of anticipation? Easy. How about setting off a parenthetical in a way that makes everything else in the mind go silent? Twice before noon.

When you think about it, what is the bo staff but one big wooden em dash?

Lately some have proposed retiring the em altogether, swapping it with another mark like the forward slash. I’ve considered adding asterisks to each, along with a disclaimer assuring readers of its non-LLM origin. The worst part is that the em dash’s greatest virtue was its elegance, and an elegant solution remains elusive.

Anyway, I hate to be so doom and gloom. I used to be a pretty cheery guy. But it’s hard to keep the faith when you wake up every day only to find your hopes — * dashed.

*100% ORGANIC, AI-FREE: No vectors were compared in the creation of this em dash.