Em dashes have long been a staple of writing, used to add drama and emphasize key points. But, like many other online writers, I've been accused of overusing them, with some even suggesting that it's a classic AI writing tell.
Recently, I decided to put my writing to the test, feeding 10 of my most recent articles to a tool called Claude Sonnet 4.6 to see how it would analyze my writing. I was particularly interested in discovering whether my em-dash obsession was the writing crutch that drew the most criticism.
The results were both surprising and enlightening. According to Claude, the most common pattern in my writing that sounds like AI is the use of parenthetical asides – a total of 67 in approximately 11,700 words. This frequency and structural pattern is both a stylistic choice and a potential indicator of AI-generated content.
Em dashes, my initial suspect, came in a close second. I use them 78 times, or roughly one every 150 words, which is a high density. AI tends to rely on em dashes as a crutch to connect clauses that should be separate sentences or use a comma.
The analysis also highlighted several other potential AI tells, including lengthy sentences, filler hedges like "actually" and "rather," and impersonal sentence starters like "It is/was/has/seems." However, it's worth noting that these are common pitfalls in writing, and being aware of them is the first step to improvement.
The good news is that, overall, my writing generally sounds human, ranking just 3 out of 10 on the "sounds like AI" meter. Claude praised my vocabulary, sentence starters, and willingness to commit to opinions rather than hedging everything into mush.
However, the analysis also suggested that my writing could benefit from a bit more editing and tightening. This is a very human problem, and one that I'm committed to addressing. From now on, I'll be making a conscious effort to use em dashes and parentheticals more sparingly, and to focus on crafting clear, concise sentences that engage my readers.
It's a promise I'm happy to make, and one that I hope will improve the quality and readability of my writing.
