Craft Glossary · term

Em-dash & punctuation tics

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Plain English: Over-reliance on the em dash (—) where a comma, colon, or full stop belongs; also curly-quote/formatting artifacts and over-bolding when prose bleeds in from a chat context. AI prose uses dashes to avoid committing to sentence boundaries — everything becomes interruption, nothing ends cleanly.

Rule: Vary punctuation deliberately. Reserve the em dash for genuine interruption, apposition, or a beat that a comma would flatten. Track dash density per book; if more than two dashes appear in five consecutive lines, rewrite at least one sentence to end on a period.

Fail: Dash chains — three or four em dashes in one sentence stitching clauses that should be two sentences. Dash as comma — "She ran — fast — toward the gate — breath burning." when commas or periods would be clearer.

BAD → GOOD:

BAD: The tunnel narrowed — not dangerously — but enough — enough to force single file.

GOOD: The tunnel narrowed. Not dangerously, but enough to force single file.

BAD: He wasn't angry — not exactly — more tired — though tired wasn't the word.

GOOD: He wasn't angry. Tired, maybe — though that wasn't the word either.

See: LLM tics & tells — catalog · Cadence · Tic / machine-tell

Arjuna Badger Press · Craft Library

Glossary · Doctrine · Anti-patterns · Triptych form · LLM tells

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