RFC 454545 – Human Em Dash Standard
gist.github.com
March 10, 2026
7 min read
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Summary
RFC 454545 proposes the Human Em Dash (HED), a Unicode character that visually resembles the traditional em dash but is encoded separately to indicate probable human authorship. The document is categorized as informational and is set for March 2026.
Key Takeaways
- The Human Em Dash (HED) is a proposed Unicode character that visually resembles the traditional em dash but is encoded separately to indicate human authorship.
- The Human Attestation Mark (HAM) is a Unicode mark that precedes the Human Em Dash to assert that the dash was produced by a human.
- The introduction of the HED and HAM aims to address concerns about the authenticity of punctuation in the context of increasing automated text generation.
- Automated systems are prohibited from emitting the Human Em Dash, and compliance with this standard is necessary to avoid being considered adversarial.
Community Sentiment
Concerns
- AI has diminished the utility of the em-dash in writing, indicating a loss of nuanced punctuation in engineering documents.