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

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358 points tkgally | 3 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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. latexr ◴[30 Aug 25 04:53 UTC] No.45071991[source]▶
Because it’s becoming a common belief that any em-dash indicates LLM writing, and us people who regularly use em-dashes are attempting to show that is a poor signal on its own. The goal is to show proof of humans using it.
replies(1): >>45072083 #
2. Tostino ◴[30 Aug 25 05:22 UTC] No.45072083[source]▶
Or at least to have a baseline. If you see a sudden jump, that does tell you something.
replies(1): >>45072436 #
3. bee_rider ◴[30 Aug 25 06:46 UTC] No.45072436[source]▶
Maybe it tells us that, thanks to AI, some folks learned about a perfectly useful piece of punctuation.