Look at any unedited AI-written blog post and count the em-dashes per paragraph. The count is usually three or four. The em-dash is being used as a default connective — a way to drop a parenthetical aside into every sentence — and the result is prose that reads like one long, breathless qualification.
Why models reach for it
An em-dash lets a model hedge mid-sentence without committing to a full subordinate clause. It's a low-risk move statistically — most of the time the surrounding text reads grammatically — so the model uses it constantly. Human writers use em-dashes too, but they alternate. A colon here. A full stop there. A genuine parenthetical with brackets when the aside is genuinely an aside.
Read your draft aloud
Em-dashes have a sound when you read them — a pause that's longer than a comma and shorter than a full stop. If every paragraph in your post has three of them, you'll hear it. Replace half with full stops and the rhythm changes immediately.
Before
Most companies — even the ones with the best engineering teams — struggle with documentation, which is something we've seen in our own work — and have spent the last year trying to solve — by building tools that make the boring parts feel less boring.
After
Most companies struggle with documentation. The good engineering teams struggle with it too — that's the part that surprised us. We've spent the last year trying to make the boring parts feel less boring, which mostly means making the tools care about formatting so the writer doesn't have to.