The em dash (the long dash, not the short hyphen) is the most recognizable AI writing tell. Here is how to get rid of it for good.
Why ChatGPT uses so many em dashes
Large language models learned from published prose, where the em dash is a polished way to set off an aside. The model picked up the habit and overuses it. The result is text peppered with spaced em dashes that most everyday writing never contains.
Option 1: a one-click cleaner (fastest)
Paste your text into a tool that handles dashes for you. The advantage over manual find-and-replace is that a good cleaner also fixes the en dash (the medium one, often left behind) and removes the invisible characters that ride along with pasted AI text. In textscrubr, turn on Normalize punctuation and choose what an em dash becomes:
- a comma, the most natural for the parenthetical clauses ChatGPT writes
- a hyphen, a safe one-to-one swap
- nothing, which closes the gap entirely
It also keeps numeric ranges like 2010-2020 readable instead of mangling them, and any replacement that could change meaning waits for your approval.
Option 2: find and replace
In any editor, open find-and-replace and paste the em dash character (—) into the search box. Replace it with , or -. Two cautions:
- You usually cannot type an em dash directly, so copy one from your text first.
- This misses en dashes and does nothing about hidden characters.
Option 3: a keyboard or autocorrect rule
If you write a lot, add an autocorrect entry that turns the em dash into a comma as you type. This stops them at the source in your own writing, though it will not retroactively clean pasted text.
What to replace an em dash with
It depends on how it was used:
- Setting off an aside? A pair of commas usually reads best.
- Joining two complete thoughts? A period or semicolon.
- Trailing emphasis at the end? Often just delete it and keep the sentence.
The goal is not to ban the em dash forever, it is to remove the unnatural density that signals a chatbot wrote the draft.