PRISM (Second-Brain)

wiki/decisions/2026-06-30-no-em-dash-writing-standard.md

ADR: No em dashes in reader-facing copy

Date: 2026-06-30 Status: Accepted

Context

The user considers the em dash (especially the spaced aside) a recognizable AI-writing tell that makes prose read machine-generated. They want it gone from all text a reader sees.

Decision

Never use em dashes in any user-facing text: web copy, docs, reports, UI strings, headings, alt and aria text. Rewrite the sentence so it does not need one, fixing grammar.

Rationale

It is a credibility signal. Clean prose that a human would write reads as authored, not generated. The fix is to restructure, not to leave a gap.

Alternatives Considered

Option	Why rejected
Replace every em dash with a hyphen	Wrong punctuation; reads broken
Just delete the dash	Leaves a grammatically broken sentence

Consequences

Rewrite patterns: period (two sentences), comma, colon (intro to a list or detail), parentheses (a true aside).
Applied to prism.chowmes.com/ (About) and /reports/: 0 em dashes in visible copy, verified live.
Audit report pages (/{slug}/) deliberately left as-is: their copy comes from the audit data and the render template, a larger separate sweep, and the user said leave them.
Applies on generation too: skills and templates that emit copy should not emit em dashes. Saved as memory feedback-no-em-dashes.