edittxt

AI cleanup

Em Dash Remover

Find every em dash in your text and replace it with a comma, period, hyphen, or nothing — your choice.

Replace with

Input

Output

Also catches horizontal bars (―) and double hyphens (--).

Your text is processed on your device and never uploaded anywhere.

The one-character edit that de-AIs your text

The em dash became the most talked-about punctuation mark of the AI era. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini all use it heavily — often several times in a single paragraph — and readers noticed. Whatever you think about that, if you publish AI-assisted drafts, dash density is now the first thing to fix.

Paste your text, pick a replacement, and every em dash is swapped in a way that keeps the sentence readable: spacing is normalized around the replacement, and if you choose period, the following word is capitalized automatically.

Fixing more than dashes?

Em dashes rarely travel alone. If the text came from an AI assistant, run it through the AI Text Cleaner instead — it handles em dashes with the same options, plus curly quotes, hidden characters, and a highlighter for stock AI phrases.

Frequently asked questions

Why does ChatGPT use so many em dashes?
LLMs learned from edited prose — books, journalism, essays — where em dashes are common, and the dash is a flexible way to join clauses, so models reach for it constantly. The result is a density of em dashes that very few human writers produce, which is why readers now treat it as a signature of AI text.
Which replacement should I choose?
Comma is the safest default for mid-sentence dashes ('fast — and simple' → 'fast, and simple'). Period works when the dash joins two complete thoughts, and the tool capitalizes the next word for you. Hyphen keeps a visible pause. 'Just remove' deletes the dash and closes the gap with a space.
Does it also catch -- double hyphens and the horizontal bar?
Yes. Besides the em dash (—, U+2014) it replaces the horizontal bar (―) and double hyphens used as improvised dashes, with the same replacement rule you selected.
Are em dashes bad writing?
Not at all — used sparingly they're elegant. The problem is frequency: several per paragraph reads as unedited AI output. Keep the ones that earn their place and replace the rest.

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