I’m going to date myself a little here, but stay with me.
Millennial pink was everywhere for a while. Branding, interiors, fashion, startups. It started as cool, tasteful, and just different enough to feel modern. Then suddenly, it was on everything. So much so that when you saw it, you immediately knew when it peaked.
The em dash might be headed down the same path.
Once a sign of thoughtful, editorial writing, it’s now becoming one of the quiet tells that a piece of content was written, or at least heavily assisted, by AI.
Confession: I love good punctuation.
I also love writing the way I think, which usually involves commas, half-formed thoughts, and a lot of ellipses. If you ask my team, they’ll tell you my “…” are a dead giveaway that something came straight from me. For better or worse.
That’s part of the reason this has been on my mind lately. Not grammar. Not style guides. Trust.
AI models were trained on a lot of very good writing. Journalism, essays, long-form thought leadership. The kind of writing editors love. And those writers loved the em dash.
So AI does too.
A little too much.
When you start noticing it, you can’t unsee it. Perfectly structured sentences. Clean transitions. Ideas tied together neatly with em dashes, again and again. It reads well. It just doesn’t always read human.
Humans are messier.
We interrupt ourselves. We change direction mid-thought. We trail off. We use commas where we probably shouldn’t. We use ellipses because that’s literally how our brains move from one idea to the next.
AI tends to smooth all of that out. And ironically, that polish is becoming a red flag.
This isn’t about avoiding AI. We use it every day. It’s a tool, not the enemy.
But as consumers get more aware of AI-generated content, they’re also getting better at spotting anything that feels templated, overly polished, or emotionally flat. When content starts to feel manufactured, trust erodes. Especially in categories where credibility actually matters.
This matters for people… and it matters for machines.
AI search and AI Overviews prioritize content that feels grounded in real experience. Reviews, UGC, conversational language, slightly imperfect phrasing. These are strong trust signals because they sound like real people talking about real outcomes.
When brand content starts to sound like the same systems summarizing it, credibility erodes on both sides.
Honestly… loosen up.
Write the way you talk. Let sentences wander a little. Use commas. Use ellipses. Break a rule or two if that’s how your thoughts actually flow.
Read your content out loud. If it sounds like a keynote slide or a thought leadership template, it probably needs to be humanized.
I’ll happily own my ellipses. They’re not perfect. They’re not elegant. But they’re real. And right now, real is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
AI can write faster than any of us. Cleaner too.
What it still struggles with is sounding like someone who’s actually lived the experience they’re describing. The brands that stand out won’t be the most polished ones. They’ll be the ones that feel current, credible, and human.
Even if that means fewer em dashes… and embracing the millennial pink phase while we’re at it.
