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Show HN: Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT

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358 points tkgally | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source

The use of the em dash (—) now raises suspicions that a text might have been AI-generated. Inspired by a suggestion from dang [1], I created a leaderboard of HN users according to how many of their posts before November 30, 2022—that is, before the release of ChatGPT—contained em dashes. Dang himself comes in number 2—by a very slim margin.

Credit to Claude Code for showing me how to search the HN database through Google BigQuery and for writing the HTML for the leaderboard.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45053933

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IAmGraydon ◴[30 Aug 25 04:25 UTC] No.45071916[source]▶
I guess I’m confused. Why is it interesting to know how many em dashes were used before the dawn of ChatGPT? It’s how many AFTER that seems like it would be far more interesting.
replies(4): >>45071977 #>>45071990 #>>45071991 #>>45072503 #
1. tkgally ◴[30 Aug 25 04:53 UTC] No.45071990[source]▶
As mentioned in the thread that included dang’s suggestion [1], examples of one’s use of em dashes timestamped before ChatGPT could be used as a defense if one is accused, on the basis of em dashes, of having written with AI.

Whether this is interesting or not, well…

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45046883