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358 points tkgally | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | 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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userbinator ◴[30 Aug 25 04:14 UTC] No.45071871[source]▶

>>45071722 (OP) #

I suspect they are generated via "autocorrect", the same way as "smart (more like stupid) quotes" and other characters that tend to cause a great deal of frustration should they find their way into source code. It would be interesting to see how many users regularly make posts containing non-ASCII characters.

replies(5): >>45071883 #>>45071891 #>>45071897 #>>45071898 #>>45072027 #

1. southwindcg ◴[30 Aug 25 05:02 UTC] No.45072027[source]▶

>>45071871 #

I use Autokey. I've added a bunch of occasionally-used HTML entities and Unicode characters so I don't need to go hunting for them.

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