#009: The Grammar Police and the Em Dash

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There are two punctuation marks that say more about how you think than what you say: the em dash and the ellipsis.

The em dash is a statement—it interrupts, redirects, adds, asserts. It says "I'm not done yet" and keeps the sentence alive with tension. The ellipsis, on the other hand, is an exhale. It trails off, lets things hang. It says "Maybe I don’t need to finish this thought..." and invites the reader to step into the silence.

One punches through. The other fades out.

So why is the em dash suddenly hated again?

Because AI uses it. A lot. Not incorrectly—just instinctively. Because when trying to sound human, when mimicking inner monologue, the em dash is how you breathe on the page. It's the rhythm of interruption, the voice of contradiction, the sudden sideways turn of thought.

Critics now use that as proof:

‍“See? The em dash is overused. It’s mechanical. It’s everywhere.”

‍But what they’re really saying is: “It’s no longer ours.”

Blame AI, but the truth is—humans made it popular again. We write in fragments. We think in fragments. And the em dash is the only mark that doesn’t judge us for it.

Strunk and White—yes, real people, not Bond villains—codified a kind of literary fascism in The Elements of Style. Omit needless words. Use the active voice. Keep it clean. And sure, some of that is useful. But it left an entire generation terrified of stylistic voice. Terrified of sounding like a person.

And here comes AI, writing like a person—or trying to. Mimicking our tics. Our pauses. Our dashes. It’s no wonder people are panicking. They don’t want writing that feels. They want writing that follows rules they can control.

So we blame the em dash. We call it lazy. Overused. Artificial. But it’s not. It’s the closest thing to thought on the page.

The em dash didn’t break language. It just showed us how much we’ve already abandoned.

...,

And the ellipsis? It’s not innocent either.
It’s the breath you didn’t take. The silence you leaned into. It used to be dramatic—poetic, even. But now it’s been abused into a whisper of uncertainty. Overused in emails, texts, and vague subtweets. Deployed when we’re afraid to commit, afraid to close the sentence.

It’s the trailing edge of every “oh well, whatever, nevermind.”

AI doesn’t know what to do with it. Not really. It hesitates too perfectly. Leaves too clean a trail of doubt. It doesn’t drift—it floats like code pretending to pause.

The ellipsis is the ghost of speech. The em dash is the punch of it.
We need both—but we forgot how to use either.

and,

Footnote: The Oxford comma

You know the sentence: "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin."
Without the Oxford comma, suddenly JFK and Stalin are on the pole. That comma wasn’t optional—it was a bouncer.

But in school, I got punished for using it. The teacher—red pen cocked like a revolver—called it “superfluous.” Like punctuation should be paid for by the syllable. Like clarity was some optional subscription tier.

The Oxford comma is the linguistic equivalent of buckling your seatbelt. You don’t always need it—until you really, really do. And yet, for some reason, people still love to argue that it clutters sentences. Or that context should be enough to save you. But context is a slippery bastard, and ambiguity loves to dress up as minimalism.

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