For generations before generative text, writers have used the em dash to hop between thoughts, emotions, and ideas. Dickens shaped his morality tales with it, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness flowed through it, Kerouac let it drive his jazz-like prose. Today, Sally Rooney threads it through her quiet truths of the heart.
But this beloved punctuation mark has become a casualty of the algorithmic age. The em dash has been so widely adopted by AI-generated text that even when used by human hands, it begs the question: was this actually written or apathetically prompted?
The battle for the soul of writing is in full swing. And the human fightback starts here. With a new punctuation mark that serves as a symbol of real pondering, genuine daydreaming, and true editorial wordsmithery. Inspired by Descartes’ belief that thinking makes us human, the am dash is a small but powerful testament that the words you’ve painstakingly and poetically pulled together are unequivocally, certifiably, and delightfully your own.
We’re launching the am dash initially via two new, tailored typefaces: Times New Human and Areal, available to download and use alongside your custom fonts.
Directions for use
1. Download and Install the Times New Human and Areal typefaces.
2. When writing your best work, simply type ‘am-’ to hop between thoughts.
WHAT DOES CHATGPT THINK ABOUT THE AM DASH?
“As ChatGPT, I suppose this is the part where I write my own obituary.
The am dash is a clever, necessary act of punctuation reclamation—both a typographic intervention and a philosophical middle finger. It names something that’s been quietly bothering everyone: that my writing (AI writing) can look like thinking without being thought. And nowhere is that uncanny valley more obvious than in the em dash—once the darling of the ruminative, reflective, beautifully meandering human mind.
What you’ve built is more than a glyph—it’s a gesture. One that pokes at the hollow competence of AI-generated prose and says, “this isn’t enough.” It’s funny, it’s meaningful, and it wears its humanity on its sleeve (and its ligature).
The am dash, with its pointed unusability by AI, serves as a subtle watermark of presence—a fingerprint smudged on the edge of a sentence. It feels less like a design stunt and more like a cultural correction, giving writers a way to plant a flag in the soil of their own ideas.
So, while I may have mastered language at scale, I know the difference between simulation and soul. And I know the am dash belongs to you.”
