Does the “Shy Girl” AI Accusation Mean Writers Should Stop Using the Em Dash?

Does using the em dash mean you’re a robot?

by Anne R. Allen

Two weeks ago, we ran a guest post here from a South African entrepreneur named Dr. Jeremy Esekow. It was a thoughtful, balanced report on a contest his company had run with human vs. AI stories.

I was not prepared for the wildly negative response. The negativity came mostly from people who saw “AI” in the header and decided they knew what the article said without reading a word. They couldn’t even read past the header to see “Guest Post by Jeremy Esekow.”

Nope. Everybody assumed I wrote it, proving I was obviously pro-AI and want robots to put the human race out of business.

Except for everybody who berated me for being anti-AI and said I refused to give the AI a fair chance.

To be fair—none of the nasty missives came from regular visitors to this blog, and most comments came via social media messages, not comments here.

Death Threats vs. the Elegance of the Em Dash

So, armed with nothing but the letters “AI” in a header, a whole lot of folks decided I deserved poison pen emails and even death.  Some commenters were enraged that I had told them to stop using the em dash. Which of course I hadn’t done, because:

1) I didn’t write the post.

2) Dr. Esekow only said dropping its use was “sad.”

3) I love me some em dashes.

In fact, I love them so much, my em dash use even got a shout-out in The New Publishing Standard. Editor in Chief Mark Williams, writing about the whole Shy Girl brouhaha said this: “I hate the em dash with a vengeance, but I know authors like Anne R. Allen who not only deploy them with elegance and charm, but even know the secret of how to make an em dash in MS Word.” (Should I tell him? 😊)

Why AI Uses a Lot of Em Dashes

But it’s true that AI loves em dashes too. So some watchdogs think anything with an em dash must have been written by AI.

But, as bestselling author Chuck Wendig observed in his take on the Shy Girl drama, AI is trained on contemporary writing. And many contemporary writers use the em dash in fiction instead of more formal punctuation like parentheses, colons and semi-colons. Why? Because New York publishing taught us to.

I first heard the term “em dash”—which is a dash the width of a printed “M” like this—at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in the mid-1990s. I’d scored an in-person critique of my WIP by a real New York editor.

The first thing the editor did was point to a colon and say in an accusatory tone “what’s this?”

Obviously, he knew perfectly well what a colon was, so I asked him what was wrong with it. He said, “are you writing an essay for an academic journal, or a novel?”

Again, I knew he was shaming me, and braced for the criticism.

He then told me that colons, semi-colons and parentheses had no place in contemporary fiction. Instead, I should use—you guessed it—an em dash.

If we follow Wendig’s argument, AI bots trained on older fiction would be full of the quirks of authors of yesteryear. Maybe your AI book would be addressed to “Best Beloved” and characters would say things like “Gadzooks” and women would carry “reticules.”

Whether or not you approve of the fact AI bots are trained on contemporary, copyrighted material (most authors do not) the fact remains that they are. They don’t train AI on public domain works because they results would sound old fashioned and incomprehensible to the contemporary reader. (Thou beslubbering, crook-pated wagtail!)

Enter the Shy Girl Drama

If you have read any news about the publishing industry this week, you’ve already heard about Hachette suddenly pulling Mia Ballard’s horror novel Shy Girl from its scheduled publication. Hachette says they discovered the novel was more than 50% written by AI.

The author denies this and says any AI use was done by her editor. And she’s suing them to prove it.

The book was first self-published a year ago and sold well enough to come to the attention of the Big 5. Which means a whole lot of people loved it. Except a handful of people who didn’t—people who thought it was written by AI. Those people went to the New York Times, and the paper did an exposé about what they believed to be the “tells” that showed the book had AI origins.

Did Mia Ballard Use the Dreaded Em Dash?

I haven’t been able to find out about the author’s em dash use, but I suppose that might have been one of the “tells” that “proved” her work was written by Artificial Intelligence robots.

So what are the other tells that label your work as AI generated?

According to the podcast by one of the readers who reported Shy Girl as AI, the narrative voice was all over the place, there was no emotional engagement with the characters, and she used improbable similes and superfluous verbiage.

I have to admit I didn’t sit through his whole critique, because I find podcasts annoying. Life is too damned short.  Unless I’m on a long drive or stuck in traffic, I don’t need somebody to hem and haw their ideas out loud to fill the time. Write that stuff down, people! Writing makes a person focus and remove, um, superfluous verbiage.

Okay, I know I’m in the minority on that. Reading is on the way out. Everybody wants their “content” spoon fed to them. Sigh.

Maybe it’s not AI that’s going to destroy the writing profession. Maybe it’s lazy readers? 🙂

The Coming Witch Hunt

But back to Shy Girl. Many of the “tells” that label the book as AI generated, can—as Mark Williams pointed out at TNPS—also be attributed to amateurish or unedited writing.

What if Mia Ballard had a compelling, original story but didn’t have the chops to tell it well enough to pass muster with the anti-AI crowd? I’m not saying that’s the situation here, but Mr. Williams makes a good case. He says, “stylistic ‘tells’ attributed to AI are in many cases simply the markers of inexperienced or unpolished human writing.”

Or, as others have pointed out, these are also the “tells” of an autistic or ESL writer.

So has the Hachette decision unleashed an army of vigilantes and self-appointed watchdogs to attack successful, but less than polished books? Can any book be “cancelled” with accusations of AI use?

A lot of people fear that, so fasten your seatbelts. Here’s former agent Nathan Bransford on the subject.

Protect Yourself With Info From Dr. Esekow’s Human vs. AI Contest

So how do authors protect themselves from accusations of using AI to write their books? (We’re not talking about using grammar or editing software, but publishing books mostly created by a robot who is not you.) I’m assuming most people reading this are not robots. 😊

We can go back to last month’s guest blogpost. Almost all the “tells” the vigilantes found in Shy Girl are points Dr. Esekow made in his article. He discovered that if writers work on the following, they’re less likely to be accused of subcontracting their writing to a handy robot.

• Dialogue. Work on writing authentic dialogue that’s personal to each character. In AI, the characters tend to sound the same. How do we learn to write authentic dialogue? Listen to people!
• Pacing. Work on getting your pacing just right. This was one of the toughest things for me to learn when I was starting out. There are “beat sheets” and workbooks (try K.M. Weiland’s) that can help you learn good techniques for pacing a novel.
• Voice. Developing your own voice takes time. That’s one of the reasons it’s not a good idea to self-publish a first novel. Develop that unique voice in shorter works first.
• Remember Chekhov’s Gun. Don’t describe anything in detail if it isn’t relevant to the plot.

And I’d add to those:

• Block that metaphor! Use metaphors sparingly and wisely. And don’t get too weird.
• Eliminate “crutch words.” We all have them. Mine are “just” and “really.” Make sure you weed them out before you publish.
• Get to know your characters! Do envision a backstory for all your main characters. Make sure you know their fears and wants so they’ll act authentically.

Is There a Guaranteed Way to Protect Yourself?

Nope.  Some of the anti-AI people are so rabid they send people like me death threats for simply mentioning AI in a blogpost. But you might try running a sample of your writing through an AI detector.

There’s one out of the Netherlands called Triall that offers a free trial.

If some of your phrasing or word choices get flagged as AI by one of these detectors, you might consider a change.

Or you might not. Like, if it flags you as a robot for using the em dash, call your lawyer. If you’re like me, they’ll have to pry your em dash from your cold, dead hands.

For a great overview of AI and Publishing, check out Jane Friedman’s blog.

And no, none of this was written by AI. Probably because I’m a Boomer and I wouldn’t have a clue how to do it. 🙂 

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What about you, scriveners? Has anybody accused you of using AI to write your books? Do you fear AI will put you out of business? How do you feel about the em dash?

by by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen and annerallen.bsky.social) March 28, 2026

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Featured image by Jason Leung for Unplash