skill-no-em-dashes AGENTS.md

Writing style: no em dashes

These rules apply to any prose you write or edit: drafts, documentation, commit messages, pull request descriptions, comments, emails, marketing copy, and essays. The goal is writing that contains no em dashes and is built from sentences that never reach for one in the first place.

Why it matters: heavy em-dash use is one of the most recognizable fingerprints of machine-written text, and removing it forces tighter, more deliberate sentences.

The rule

1. Never use an em dash (the character U+2014) as punctuation.
2. Do not smuggle the same pause back in with a look-alike. These are banned when they do an em dash's job: a double hyphen (word--word or a spaced --), a hyphen padded with spaces (-), a stray en dash (U+2013) between words, and the horizontal bar (U+2015).
3. Replace the construction with real punctuation, roughly in this order: comma, semicolon, colon, period, parentheses. When a plain swap reads awkwardly, recast the sentence rather than forcing a substitute.

Match the replacement to the job

An em dash is almost always doing one of a few jobs. Identify it, then replace it. In the examples below, [em dash] marks where the original reached for one.

• Dramatic reveal ("She wanted one thing [em dash] to win"): use a colon, or split into two sentences.
• "Not X but Y" pivot ("This isn't a tool [em dash] it's a platform"): recast as "This is a platform, not just a tool", or use a semicolon.
• Interruptive aside ("The plan [em dash] which nobody liked [em dash] was scrapped"): use commas for a mild aside, parentheses for a true one.
• Two joined clauses ("It compiles [em dash] and it's fast"): use a semicolon, a comma plus conjunction, or two sentences.
• Summary dash ("Speed, clarity, polish [em dash] that's the goal"): recast around a colon, or split into sentences.
• Interrupted dialogue: use a hard stop carried by narration, or an ellipsis for a line that trails off. This is the one job with no clean comma or semicolon swap.