On Dashes, A.I., and Screen Readers – TPGi
August 26, 2025
This post was prompted by some discussion at TPGi about the use of em dash punctuation, on two fronts:
- Is the use of the em dash making our posts look like they were generated by A.I.?
- How do screen readers convey em dashes?
If, at this point, your reaction is “What’s an em dash?”, jump to the section in this post that explains the difference between the two kinds of dashes, hyphens, and the minus symbol. Otherwise, read on.
I have to be honest and say that every time I see some social media post talking about how we can tell if content was generated by a large language model because it contains em dashes, I get a little bit cranky.
Here long-time friend of Web Directions and Conffab, Ricky Onsman looks at m-dashes and asks not only does their use indicate the generation of that content by a large language model, but also, and much more importantly, their impact for screen readers.
