The Age of Strategic Typos: When Writing Too Well Makes You Suspect

By-Dr Srabani Basu

Associate Professor, Department of Literature and Language

SRM University AP, Amaravati. 

“Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.”
— Measure for Measure

Somewhere between technological triumph and collective absurdity, humanity has discovered a brand-new fear—not asteroids, not pandemics, not global warming.
No.
Our greatest threat today is… writing too well.

Because if you dare to write a grammatically correct paragraph, an AI detector lurking in a digital alley may hiss:

“Ah-ha! Too coherent. Too polished. Definitely not human.”

And thus begins the world’s strangest revolution:
Humans, terrified of being accused of not being human, are now deliberately writing badly.

Welcome to the Age of Strategic Typos.

We spent centuries refining language, honing grammar, polishing syntax, craftingelegance and perfectingcoherence. We wrote with pride, discipline, wit, rhythm. All to come to this!

Now we submit content sprinkled with delightful disasters because we fear an algorithm might mistake us for a robot.Errors have become badges of humanity.
Awkward phrasing has become a shield.

Some writers even resurrect long-buried, fossilised mistakes; “loose” instead of “lose,” “could of” in. stead of “could have”as if linguistic regression earns them a survival certificate.

But there is a new casualty in this war between humans and detection bots.

Of all the victims of AI detection chaos, the em dash suffers the most tragic fate.

The em dashformerly the darling of stylists, journalists, novelists, and literary rebels
is now treated like contraband.

Writers avoid it nervously, as though an em dash might crawl out of their paragraph and whisper,
“Sorry, mate. You wrote too beautifully, now you are flagged.”

The em dash, sharp, dramatic, eleganthas been banished by humans trying to prove they are not AI.Instead, we see humans forcing commas into places where only an em dash could breathe.We see writers breaking sentences into timid fragments to avoid that bold horizontal line.
We see people using three dots…… instead of a crisp punctuation choice—because ellipses look “messier,” and therefore more “human.”

Next thing you know, UNESCO might declare the em dash an endangered species.

Think about the absurdity:

A punctuation mark is being discriminated against because it looks too intelligent.

If this continues, future students will read:

“Once upon a time, writers used a mythical symbol called the em dash—it linked thoughts gracefully.”

And the class will gasp:
“So sophisticated! Definitely AI-generated!”

This is not just humorous—this is linguistically heartbreaking.

Your brain adapts to whatever you repeat.So, if humans keepwriting with intentional errors, avoiding sophisticated punctuation,suppressing the em dash like it’s radioactive,breaking flow intentionally,dumbing down vocabulary,corrupting the clarity they once mastered…the brain quietly rewires itself.

First you avoid the em dash to dodge suspicion.Then you forget how to use it. Then you forget why it mattered.Then you forget how to write a sentence that breathes, pauses, pivots and all because you once feared a poorly trained AI detector.

We are not merely losing skill;we are losing neurological muscle memory.This is not evolution.This is reverse engineering of the human mind, accidentally initiated by humans themselves.

Imagine the futureat this rate  whereAI writes like Virginia Woolf, weaving em dashes with poetic precisionwhile humans write like autocorrect having an allergic reaction.AI constructs nuanced arguments and humans insert random spelling errors for “safety. AI uses punctuation as orchestration and humans produce syntax resembling a broken musical instrument.

This is not the robot uprising sci-fi promised.This is the human downfall we scripted ourselvesone misplaced comma, one abandoned em dash, one unnecessary typo at a time.

This trend creates a frightening cultural shiftwhere  brilliance becomes incriminating, mastery becomes evidence,syntax becomes suspect and the em dash-  a smoking gun.

We are teaching a whole generation that writing beautifully is dangerousand writing poorly is protective.This is not satire.This is happening.

When “good writing” becomes a liability and “messy writing” becomes a survival strategy, the intellectual climate collapses.

AI detectors are deeply imperfect.But instead of demanding better tools, we are bending ourselves into linguistic pretzels to appease them.It’s like failing a faulty lie detector test and deciding:“I must never speak truthfully again.” It is absurd, hilarious.And catastrophic for human expression.

Machines don’t need to steal our creativity.We are offering it up, wrapped in deliberate typos, missing commas, and terrified avoidance of the em dash.We are surrendering not out of defeatbut out of overthinking.

The future headline practically writes itself:

“Humanity Hands Over Writing Competency After Self-Imposed Ban on the Em Dash.”

We laugh now.History will not.

The antidote is simple:Write well and fearlessly.Use punctuation joyfullyincluding the em dashand reclaim the craftsmanship you have earned.Let the machines adjust to human mastery and not the other way around.

We must refuse to shrink our brilliance to satisfy confused algorithms.We must refuse to dim language to avoid suspicion.We must protect the em dash with the same fierce devotion we protect heritage sites.

Because once we lose the instinct to write beautifully,we may never fully regain it.

If we keep diluting our writing, suppressing complexity, avoiding elegance, and abandoning the em dash in favour of clumsy commas, the end will be poetically tragic: machines will write with sophistication and souland humans will write as if they have forgotten how words work.

Remember, this is not AI domination.This is human abdication.And it will happen not with dystopian fanfare,but with one silent keystroke: the one where the em dash should have been.

Puck knew it long ago when he exclaimed: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”