Category / culture

by Nathan Coumbe

The em dash exists for a reason

And I’ll be damned if I stop using them now. I’ve been using em dashes since I started writing—because they work.

They do things that other parenthetical devices like commas or parentheses don’t do.

They add force to your arguments. They separate potentially unrelated but still relevant or useful thoughts—have you ever noticed this?—from the point you’re making.

And for those of you who say that there’s no way to recreate them on a computer keyboard…

Shift + Option + – (for Mac users) gives you —.

Here are 11 of them: — — — — — — — — — — —

Also, there are two other types of dashes.

– (press only the dash key) is a hyphen most often used to separate compound words.

– (made by pressing Option + – on a Mac) is called an en dash and can be used to separate things like dates (April 20–23).1

And then you have the glorious em dash.

Why do they show up so often in AI writing? It’s simple: most of the best writers in history made (and still make) liberal use of it—because it works! And because AI has imbibed all the writing ever written, it also uses it quite often.

Does AI use them too much? Absolutely.

Does that mean we should stop using them? Absolutely not.

So what’s the solution? You get really damn good at writing.

Develop a style of your own, a voice, a way of writing that sounds like you—and only you. So when people read your writing, they know that you did it, not an AI.

And you’ll be able to use fifty em dashes in a single piece if you wanted to, and no one would care because they would know, simply because of your personal style, that you were generous enough to take time out of your day to share something worth reading.

If you write well—and like yourself—you’ll be fine.

(Ann Handley actually beat me to this a long while back. But I was so incensed by no less than 7 posts about this yesterday that I had to say something.)

  1. Unfortunately, there is a feature in WordPress’s code that prevents the three different dashes from rendering properly. I didn’t realize this until after I publish. So if you’re reading this on my site instead of in email, you won’t be able to see the difference between them.

    You can test this for yourself: pull up a blank document somewhere on your computer and try all three keystroke combinations.

    Also, this is a great reason to subscribe to my email newsletter, so you’ll see it rendered the way it’s supposed to. ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

Excuse me: Is that emergency button made in China?

There’s a blue emergency call tower halfway along a walking trail I frequent each week.

If you’re being attacked or having a heart attack, you smack a button on it, and it immediately calls emergency services and shares your location with them so they can find you—fast.

When I walked by it the other day, I noticed they’d added something new to it. It was a big sign, probably a square foot in size.

And on the sign, printed in big block letters, were the words, “Proudly made in the USA!”

I thought about that sign for the rest of my walk. I just kept thinking, “Who was that for? What was the purpose of that new sign?”

I don’t think it’s for the person in trouble. If you’re being chased by an axe murderer, would you check the tower for a “Made in China” stamp before you pressed the button?

I doubt it.

And if it were manufactured somewhere else, would that really deter you? Oh geez. Made in China?! Gross. I’d rather this guy just kill me than press the button.

It’s not marketing. No one who sees it has any need (or ability) to buy one and stick it in their front yard, so where it’s made doesn’t factor into a buying decision.

Is it supposed to inspire confidence in people like me who walk past it every day? I already know most things aren’t manufactured here, and they typically work just fine.1

The only answer that seems to fit is that it’s for the people who installed it.

It’s a flag. It’s performative patriotism—not for any user of the tower, but for whoever approved the purchase, or whoever installed it. It’s a tribal signal. To paraphrase Seth Godin: “People like us install things like this.”

The sign isn’t communicating with us. It’s communicating about someone else.

  1. In fact, I’ve had such horrible experiences with American-made brands (see: any American car) that it might actually be triggering the opposite effect the sign intended. Now I’m thinking, “Man… Would that thing actually work in an emergency?” ↩︎