176 Years Before ChatGPT — The Original Lovers of the Em Dash

Long before ChatGPT learned to think out loud, the Victorians were already doing it — in print, with ink, paper, and a remarkable fondness for one particular piece of punctuation. The em dash. If you’ve ever typed a sentence like this — pausing mid-thought, adding an aside, or pivoting suddenly — you are participating in a habit that nineteenth-century writers would have recognised instantly. Thinking on the page Victorian prose does not always aim for neatness. Instead, it often aims for process — the visible unfolding of thought. The em dash was perfectly suited to this way of writing. It al…