How to Remove Em Dashes From ChatGPT Text

Paste a paragraph from ChatGPT into an email and the long dashes jump out: "The plan is simple—launch in May, measure everything, adjust." Em dashes are normal punctuation, but chat assistants use so many of them that a page full of dashes now reads as AI-written to a lot of people. The good news is that they take seconds to fix, and a minute more to fix well.

The fastest fix: clean the whole text at once

If you just want the dashes gone, the AI Text Cleaner replaces every one in a single pass:

1. Paste your text into the box.
2. Leave Em dashes (—) → hyphen (-) ticked. It is on by default.
3. Click Clean Text and copy the result.

Each em dash becomes a spaced hyphen, so "simple—launch" turns into "simple - launch" without doubled spaces, and en dashes become plain hyphens. The same click also straightens curly quotes, removes bullet symbols and markdown asterisks, turns the ellipsis character into three dots, and cleans invisible characters such as non-breaking spaces. If you want to keep any of those, untick that option before you clean. Everything happens in your browser, so the text is never uploaded.

A spaced hyphen is a safe, mechanical fix. It is fine for chat messages and quick notes. For anything you will put your name to, read on: most dashes have a better replacement.

Better than a hyphen: pick the right replacement

An em dash does one of a few jobs. Work out which one, and the right punctuation is usually obvious.

• Setting off an aside in the middle of a sentence: use commas, or parentheses for a stronger break. “The report—finished last night—is attached” becomes “The report, finished last night, is attached.”
• Introducing an explanation or a list: use a colon. “We need three things—time, budget and people” becomes “We need three things: time, budget and people.”
• Joining two complete sentences: use a full stop, or a semicolon. “The deadline moved—we have two more weeks” becomes “The deadline moved. We have two more weeks.”
• Adding a short afterthought: use a comma. “It works—most of the time” becomes “It works, most of the time.”

Two habits help. First, read the sentence aloud: where you pause briefly, use a comma; where you stop, use a full stop. Second, look for dashes that hide a run-on sentence. AI text often chains three ideas with dashes, and splitting them into two shorter sentences usually reads better than any punctuation swap.

Swap em dashes for commas automatically

If most of your dashes are asides, you can make commas the default. In the AI Text Cleaner:

1. Untick Em dashes (—) → hyphen (-), so the dashes are still there for your own rule.
2. Under Custom rules, type an em dash (—) in the first box and a comma followed by a space in the second.
3. If your text has spaces around its dashes ("simple — launch"), add a second rule above it that replaces space, dash, space with comma, space.
4. Click Clean Text, then read the result once. Commas don't fit every case, and the table above shows where a colon or full stop works better.

Custom rules are plain find-and-replace pairs that run after the presets. For a one-off replacement with a count of how many were changed, the Find and Replace tool does the same job on its own.

Removing em dashes in Word or Google Docs

• Microsoft Word: open Find and Replace (Ctrl+H on Windows), type ^+ in Find what to match every em dash (^= matches en dashes), enter your replacement and choose Replace All. These special codes are part of Word's search; WordTips lists them. Word can also turn two typed hyphens into a dash as you type, which you can switch off in AutoCorrect's "AutoFormat As You Type" settings.
• Google Docs: open Edit → Find and replace (Ctrl+H), paste an actual em dash (—) into the Find box, type your replacement and click Replace all. Docs doesn't use Word's codes, so the character itself is what it searches for.

Stop ChatGPT adding them in the first place

Prevention is quicker than cleanup. In November 2025, OpenAI said ChatGPT now follows a custom instruction not to use em dashes, as TechCrunch reported. Add a line such as "Don't use em dashes" under Personalization → Custom instructions in ChatGPT's settings. Coverage of the change noted that some users still saw the odd dash afterwards, so treat it as fewer dashes rather than none, and run a final check before you send anything important.

For a single conversation, you can also ask directly: "Rewrite that without em dashes, using commas, colons or separate sentences instead." Asking for the replacement you want gives better results than only banning the dash.

Em dash, en dash or hyphen?

The three look alike, which is why they get mixed up:

• Hyphen (-): the short one on your keyboard. It joins words, as in well-known or a 20-year-old car.
• En dash (–): slightly longer. It marks ranges, as in pages 10–20 or 9–5. In plain text a hyphen is an acceptable stand-in, which is what the cleaner uses.
• Em dash (—): the long one, for breaks within a sentence.

None of them is wrong. Plenty of good writers use em dashes, and if one is the best fit for a sentence, keep it. The aim isn't to hide where a draft came from; it's to end up with writing that sounds like you, and that usually means fewer dashes and shorter sentences.

Frequently asked questions

Is it wrong to use em dashes?

No. The em dash is standard punctuation and good writers use it. The problem is overuse: a dash in every other sentence makes text harder to read and is now widely seen as a sign of AI drafting.

Does the AI Text Cleaner change anything besides dashes?

By default it also straightens curly quotes, removes bullet symbols and markdown asterisks, turns the ellipsis character into three dots, cleans invisible characters and collapses extra blank lines. Untick any option you want to keep before cleaning.

How do I find every em dash in Microsoft Word?

Open Find and Replace and type ^+ in the Find what box. Use ^= to find en dashes instead.