There's no em dash key on a keyboard — which is why readers now treat '—' as a dead giveaway that text came from ChatGPT. It became the most famous AI tell for a reason: models love it and humans rarely type it.
Paste your text and CopyCleanse converts em dashes to clean hyphens, along with the other tells that travel with them: smart quotes, Unicode ellipses, and hidden characters. Every change is highlighted so you can review before you copy.
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Frequently asked questions
Why are em dashes considered an AI tell?
Most people type a plain hyphen because that's what's on the keyboard. AI models emit typographically 'correct' em dashes constantly, so heavy em dash use reads as machine-written to many editors and readers.
What does CopyCleanse replace em dashes with?
Em dashes and horizontal bars become a spaced hyphen, preserving the sentence rhythm while looking like something a person typed.
Does it fix anything else at the same time?
Yes — the same pass normalizes smart quotes, Unicode ellipses, en dashes, and strips invisible characters and AI tracking parameters from links.