Gen Z thinks they’ve figured out a dead giveaway that someone has used ChatGPT — and it might surprise you.

Widely appreciated by writers, the em dash is a versatile punctuation mark that can serve various roles within a sentence, such as replacing a comma, colon, or parentheses. According to Merriam-Webster, it is commonly used to consolidate information at the end of a sentence, incorporate additional details within a sentence, emphasize a specific point, or elaborate on preceding content.

But according to Gen Z, the lengthier hyphen is actually a so-called “ChatGPT hyphen.”

Recently, a surge of interest in the em dash was observed online following a discussion by Daisy Reed and Sapna Rao, co-hosts of the LuxeGen podcast.

This increased attention stemmed from a viral clip circulating on social media, which originated when a user shared it along with the comment, “The fact that Zoomers are unironically referring to the em-dash as ‘the ChatGPT hyphen’ is wild.”

Reed pointed out that clothing brand PrettyLittleThing announced a rebrand on social media, and the top comment under it read, “including the ChatGPT hyphen is insane.”

The hosts jokingly shared a “public service announcement” to “take out the hyphen” if you don’t want to be accused of using ChatGPT.

Rao added that “if you’re at school and you’re using [ChatGPT] for your essays, take out the hyphens. I can always tell.”

She noted that she isn’t anti-ChatGPT as long as you write your own words first, but if you’re using the platform for editing purposes, you should go through it again and put it back into your own words. “Person, ChatGPT, person,” Rao explained.

According to Reed and Rao, em dashes typically include a space on either side, and leaving out that space means that ChatGPT was used.

But spacing around an em dash varies.

When using AP Style — as most newspapers and popular magazines do — a space is inserted before and after the em dash.

Other outlets such as most books and journals, as well as Mirriam Webster, omit the spacing, closely holding whatever comes before and after the em dash in running text.