If you've spent any time on the internet in 2024 or 2025, you've noticed: AI-generated writing has a tell. Em-dashes everywhere. Sentences hedged with "that said," "ultimately," "in essence." Every paragraph ending with a tidy summary.
There's nothing wrong with em-dashes. I love em-dashes. But for PDA's voice, we've made a decision: we use two dots (..) wherever a thoughtful pause would go, and we don't use em-dashes at all. Not in copy, not in blog posts, not in our brand guidelines.
Why two dots?
It's how I actually write. Eric, in his head, when he's typing fast. Two dots feels like a breath. It's a real human punctuation pattern that AI doesn't reach for, because nobody trained it on "how Eric Ferguson writes."
Is this petty? Maybe. Is it a useful signal that real humans are running PDA? Yes. The small choices a business makes about language are the easiest tell of whether you're talking to a person or a content mill.