The Easiest Way to Spot AI Writing (Fix It in Two Seconds)

There is one character that gives away AI writing almost every time.

Most people have never heard of it. But they feel it. Something reads a little too smooth, a little too polished, a little off. They can't name it. They just trust the content less.

It is called an em dash. It looks like this: —

Longer than a hyphen. AI models reach for it constantly. GPT, Claude, Gemini, all of them. It shows up in captions, emails, social posts, website copy. Everywhere.

Watch the Short

Why It Works Against You

The average reader could not tell you what an em dash is. But they feel it. When everything is a little too connected, a little too rhythmically consistent, the content starts to feel composed instead of written. That friction costs you engagement, and you never find out why.

I noticed this pattern after running dozens of captions through AI and watching which ones underperformed. The posts with the most em dashes got the least engagement, even when the content itself was solid. The character was doing quiet damage.

The Fix

If you are running your captions, emails, or any content through AI before you post, do one thing:

Scan for em dashes and remove them.

Replace each one with a period or a comma. That is it.

Before: "This strategy works — and most people overlook it."

After: "This strategy works. Most people overlook it."

Reads different. Feels different. That is the point.

The second version sounds like a person talking. The first version sounds like a model filling in the blanks.

Why This Matters More Than Most AI Advice

A lot of AI content advice focuses on prompting. Better prompts, longer prompts, system prompts. That stuff helps. But it does not fix the output signal problem.

Your audience follows you because of your voice. Not a smoother version of your voice. Not a more eloquent version. Yours. When the output is full of em dashes and over-constructed sentences, you are slowly replacing your voice with a pattern. People notice, even when they cannot explain it.

One edit. Real difference.

Before You Post, Do This

• Run your draft through AI as usual
• Search for — in the text
• Replace each one with a period or a comma
• Read it out loud once. If it sounds like you, post it. If it does not, keep editing.

That is the whole process. Two seconds every time.

The posts where I stopped skipping this step are the ones that get replies, shares, and DMs. The ones that feel like a person wrote them, because a person cleaned them up before hitting publish.

If you want help building a content system that actually sounds like you at scale, reach out here.