About the Society
In 2025—or thenabouts—there arose a terrible calumny to the effect that em dashes in prose were a sign of generative AI.
Some of us human writers who have loved and used em dashes all our lives felt the need to push back.
Various organizations have arisen to defend, reclaim, or protect the em dash. But some of us felt that another organization would be a good idea—one that wouldn’t take itself too seriously, one that wouldn’t request any personal information, one that would be open to all lovers of the em dash—in short, a Society modeled loosely on the Semicolon Appreciation Society.
Also, a Society with a good acronym.
Membership
Would you like to be a member of EmDASH?
If so: Congratulations—you are now a member!
Go forth and appreciate em dashes.
Links
- Want an em dash? Visit Get an Emdash and click the button.
- Reclaim the Em Dash declares that the em dash is under attack, and asks us to keep using em dashes. It also asks us to provide our email addresses, without saying what the addresses will be used for.
- The Em Dash Society is a “place to express and discuss how we as writers preserve our authenticity in the age of AI.”
- PEDIC, the Protect Em Dash Initiative Center, seems like an earnest and well-meaning organization, but a very serious one (“we are guardians of precise communication, defenders of linguistic nuance, and champions of the full expressive potential of written language”), and one that offers paid membership.
- The Semicolon Appreciation Society is about a different beloved punctuation mark; it’s what inspired our Society.
- Emily “Dash” Dickinson is the Poet Laureate of our Society.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I type an em dash?
Depends on your platform:
- Mac: Option+Shift+hyphen.
- Windows: Alt+0151 (on a numeric keypad).
- Linux: AltGr+Shift+hyphen.
- iOS and Android: Press and hold the hyphen button on the keyboard, then select the em dash from the options that appear.
…Or if you just need one once in a while, visit Get an Emdash and click the button.
When do I use an em dash?
Em dashes have many uses.
The most common use is to indicate an interruption in a sentence—like, for example, if you suddenly realize you want to say something different from what you started out with.
For more about how and where to use em dashes, see Wikipedia or the Chicago Manual of Style.
Do I put spaces around an em dash?
You can if you want to?
We prefer not to. But some people like them.
Why not just use a hyphen?
Some writers and publishers prefer alternatives to the em dash. For example:
- A hyphen surrounded by spaces.
- An en dash surrounded by spaces.
- An en dash without spaces.
We in EmDASH shake our heads sadly at such approaches—how could anyone forsake the beauty and elegance of an em dash for such inadequate substitutes?—but we recognize that everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinion.
We must defend our language!
That’s not a question, but you do you.
(The history of attempts to “defend” English is not a glorious one, which makes us dubious about that framing. We do agree, though, that humans should continue to use em dashes, and should continue to resist the idea that em dashes are a sign of generative AI.)
Generative AI is terrible!
That’s also not a question, but yes, we agree.
Why’s it called an em dash?
It’s the width of a capital letter M in a given font.
Not to be confused with an en dash, which is the width of a capital N.
Who created this site?
Jed Hartman, who has taken it upon himself to use the editorial we on this site.