Beautiful words
The Am Dash
theamdash.com
For generations before generative text, writers have used the em dash to hop between thoughts, emotions, and ideas. Dickens shaped his morality tales with it, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness flowed through it, Kerouac let it drive his jazz-like prose. Today, Sally Rooney threads it through her quiet truths of the heart.
But this beloved punctuation mark has become a casualty of the algorithmic age. The em dash has been so widely adopted by AI-generated text that even when used by human hands, it begs the question: was this actually written or apathetically prompted?
The battle for the soul of writing is in full swing. And the human fightback starts here. With a new punctuation mark that serves as a symbol of real pondering, genuine daydreaming, and true editorial wordsmithery. Inspired by Descartes’ belief that thinking makes us human, the am dash is a small but powerful testament that the words you’ve painstakingly and poetically pulled together are unequivocally, certifiably, and delightfully your own.
We’re launching the am dash initially via two new, tailored typefaces: Times New Human and Areal, available to download and use alongside your custom fonts.
“Everything is in disarray. All this for one person, for the relation that exists between you. Your fidelity to the idea of that relation. In the light of that, you have come to hold too loosely many other important things: the respect of your family, the admiration of your colleagues and acquaintances, even the understanding of your closest friend
... See more“Proliferation of inappropriate attachments. Holding hard, harder, clutching, not letting go. Well, if that's suffering, he thinks, let me suffer. Yes. To love whoever I have left. And if ever I lose someone, let me descend into a futile and prolonged rage, yes, despair, wanting to break things, furniture, appliances, wanting to get into fights, to
... See more“Her bitten nails, reminding Margaret of Ivan. Reminded again now listening. On the phone with him last night, she mentioned the recital, and he told her that Bach was his favour-ite composer, that he would be sorry to miss the show. It gave her a tender feeling, this remark, suggestion of another reality.
That he might, under different circumstance
... See moreIdeas related to this collection