With so many AI detectives on the case, pointing out the telltale signs of machine writing, you may worry about differentiating your own writing from machine style. Get to the Point is keeping the em dash, no matter what the critics say.
Now That AI Can Write Like a Lawyer, Should You Stop Writing Like One?
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about how to avoid having your original writing rejected because it has the hallmarks of AI-created text. These hallmarks include the em dash.
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Don’t Fear the Em Dash (With Apologies to Blue Oyster Cult)
Detecting language lifted directly from a ChatGPT search (or Perplexity or Claude or wherever) has become an exercise in itself. Grammarly, Wikipedia and many schools at every level have whole articles about AI indicia. Numerous AI detection tools help identify AI-generated text.
An Alphabet of Punctuation Marks
An em dash, an en dash and a hyphen walk into a bar.
The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your type.”
The hyphen sighs and says, “Dissed again because I just connect. I can’t help it if I’m overused.”
The en dash says, “Talk about disrespect! I don’t get used more often than not, and most people don’t even know who I am.”
The em dash says, “You guys got nothing to complain about. When I show up, everyone thinks a machine did it.”
Em Dash or En Dash?
To state the obvious, the letter M is longer than the letter N. Likewise, an em dash (—) is longer than an en dash (–).
An em dash, or pair of em dashes, sets off a phrase more strongly than a pair of commas or parentheses. It signals a change in direction, like when Get To The Point warned “Be Really Stupid — But Cautious.” Sometimes, you have already set off a phrase using commas or parentheses within a sentence, and you want to communicate a different tone with dashes.
Until the latest brouhaha about the need to differentiate one’s writing from machine style, you probably used em dashes regularly — and correctly. (See what I did there?)
In contrast, you probably never thought much about en dashes. Neither did almost everyone else. An en dash is used to show a range, such as between dates, times or pages:
According to the World Health Organization, the COVID pandemic occurred March 2020–May 2023.
An en dash can also link capitalized words, such as the United States–Mexico border.
Keyboard tricks for inserting em dashes and en dashes appear across the internet. Your operating system, word processor and device features determine what will actually work. You can’t use the “shortcut” that calls for a numeric keypad if your laptop doesn’t have one. I don’t believe an instruction that calls for four keystrokes while holding one or more modifier keys is actually a shortcut.
Chances are that your word processor will autocorrect two minus signs (–) to an em dash. If you use one minus sign for an en dash, no one will think less of your content. What’s more, if you do go all fancy and insert an honest-to-goodness em dash or en dash, most of your readers won’t even notice.
And Then There’s The Little Hyphen
Hyphens are ubiquitous. They’re used in compound words, like thirty-one and mother-in-law, and to attach prefixes and suffixes. Hyphens can clarify, like when you instruct a client to re-sign a document; they are not resigning (quitting) anything. Hyphens separate letters to show how to spell. Her name is C-A-R-O-L-E, not C-A-R-0-L.
And sometimes they take the place of an en dash.
Where Did AI Learn This Stuff?
AI learned it from you. It sponges up data from all over the internet, including the stuff that lawyers wrote. Because lawyers wrote the original source material, AI’s output mirrors that style.
Lawyers are still churning out documents with redundant, archaic language. So when someone asks AI to spit out legal language, the questioner is likely to receive a wordy, repetitive document instead of one in plain English.
Our challenge now is to advantageously use AI to speed research and drafting without surrendering professional judgment. Do not stop using dashes to empower your writing. Similarly, semicolons, another supposed AI marker, are important to good writing.
Where you will get in trouble is if you incorporate AI output without review. That is how so many lawyers have been sanctioned for citing nonexistent law and facts. Writing how you speak is a skill many lawyers lost in law school. You need to get it back. Even if your AI query result is spot-on, revise it so it sounds like you. That includes the emphasis and pauses an em dash implies.
Related reading: “Keys to Using Generative AI in Your Law Practice.”
Get to the Point!
More Writing Tips
Find more good ideas for improving your legal writing and communications skills in “Get to the Point” by Teddy Snyder.
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