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Words (specimen)
The Strangeworks General has determined that excessive em-dash use may cause readers to hear a TED-talk voice that is not there.
Dash-Holes is a Chrome extension concept from Strangeworks Labs that monitors the em-dash levels of any page you visit — then offers six federally unfunded intervention programs to help you cope. The dash is innocent. The dosage is not.
[first recorded c. 2023, approximately everywhere at once] · See also: comma (underutilized); restraint (archaic).
dash-cam, n., obs. See DASH-HOLE.
"It's pronounced exactly how you think."
Sometime around 2023, the em dash — a perfectly respectable piece of punctuation that had spent two centuries minding its own business — became the default seasoning of polished text everywhere. Newsletters. Bios. Replies that open with "Great question." The dash didn't change. The dosage did.
Let the record show: the em dash is innocent. Emily Dickinson hung entire poems on it, and the poems held. Used once, it's a held breath — a turn you didn't see coming. Used eleven times in a product update, it's a man at a party tapping his glass before every single sentence.
Dash-Holes is not a detector, a diagnosis, or a court of law. We cannot tell you who — or what — wrote your paragraph, and we won't pretend otherwise. We can count. We can visualize. We can gently hand you a comma and ask if everything is okay at home. This is an awareness campaign. The awareness is now yours. You're welcome.
Q1.In the last 24 hours, have you used an em dash where a comma would have done honest work?
Q2.Have you ever interrupted yourself — like this — to say something you could have simply said?
Q3.Do your sentences contain caveats — to be fair — within caveats — to be clear?
Q4.Has anything you published this month been "polished" at default settings? You don't have to say by what. We can't check. That's the entire point of us.
Q5.Did you notice that question three contained three em dashes — and did you, however briefly, admire them?
Every program below runs on the same specimen: one genuinely unhinged paragraph of peak-2024 thought-leadership, dashes and all. In the extension, each one runs on whatever page you're reading.
After dark, the dashes come out. We bind them into named constellations and keep the lore on file. Squeamish? Request the Daytime Field Audit — red-circle protocol, gold ink, identical findings.
Specimens are surveyed in place. None are relocated without consent (see SVC-06).
Your document, played at tempo. Punctuation is a drum kit; the em dash is the 808 kick. Hearing protection recommended above 140 BPM.
Findings: AI-polished text is extremely danceable. This is not a compliment.
Dashes per 1,000 words, on a calibrated gauge: AP wire → New Yorker → chatbot default → Dickinson. Know your number.*
*Dickinson counted by hand. We did not enjoy it.
Field eradication training. Click a dash; it pops; an honest comma is humanely issued into the cavity. Satisfying. Federally unfunded.
Pacifist mode (leaves the dashes alone, simply sighs) ships in the extension.
Catch-and-release for dash appreciators. Hover to receive hushed field notes from a very patient narrator. Do not feed the dashes.
Season two covers the semicolon. Season three, if we're brave: the footnote.
Every em dash on this page ascends to a better place — a Dickinson poem, probably. Commas remain; each is logged as a forwarding address.
Undo, obviously. Forgiveness is a feature. Optional choir: off by default. Barely.
*We literally just changed the punctuation.
Sepes Maxima
Forms when a writer almost commits to a point — five dashes of pure qualification. Visible year-round in earnings posts and apology threads.
The Interrupting Bear
A mother clause flanked by two cubs. The classic interruptor formation — first charted in a 2023 chatbot answer about morning routines.
Cingulum Dramatis
Three dashes in a row — the belt — marking a dramatic pause that did not need to be this dramatic. Often rises directly above "Let that sink in."
Vanitas Qualificata
A vain little W that keeps qualifying itself — to be fair — in fairness — to be clear. Believed to orbit a disclaimer.
The Twins
A binary system: two dashes locked in orbit around a subordinate clause — which, gravitationally speaking, cannot escape.
Nebulosa Indistincta
Not a true constellation — a diffuse cloud of dashes too dense to resolve into individual sentences. Detected wherever the paragraph count rises and the idea count does not.
Patron Saint of Overthinking
Ancient scholars believed it appeared when a room contained too many variables, too few answers, and at least one consultant saying "let's double-click that." Its stars form the sacred shape of a decision that could have been an email. Mariners ignored it. Strategists worshipped it. Middle managers blamed it for everything.
Taking a tab copies the link. Tell someone you trust.
Strangeworks Labs believes hard problems deserve serious tools, and ridiculous problems deserve serious-looking tools. Nobody forwards a whitepaper — but a federal warning about your newsletter? That gets posted. The screenshot is the campaign.
Also, someone here used nine em dashes in a stand-up update, and we needed an intervention that scaled.
Thank you for calling the Center for Dash Control. Your call is important to us. You are caller number
Form DH-FAQ · Notice-and-Comment Period
public comments received · official responses follow"Isn't the em dash innocent in all this?"— CONCERNED, AMHERST
"Is this an AI detector?"— SKEPTICAL, THE COMMENTS SECTION
"I use em dashes and I am a human being."— FURIOUS, SENT FROM MY TYPEWRITER
"'Dash-Holes'? Really?"— APPALLED, MARKETING
"Why is a serious computing company running a punctuation awareness campaign?"— CURIOUS, A SERIOUS INDUSTRY
"Will you actually build the extension?"— HOPEFUL, AUSTIN