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

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358 points tkgally | 4 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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tptacek ◴[30 Aug 25 04:21 UTC] No.45071905[source]▶
The em-dash giveaway is an actual Unicode em-dash character, right? I professionally had to learn Latex to write a paper in the 1990s and picked up a "---" habit ever since, and I've been wondering if that's some kind of weird LLM tell now.
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majormajor ◴[30 Aug 25 04:36 UTC] No.45071948[source]▶
There's an easy keyboard shortcut for it on Macs. I always saw it as a signifier of "Mac user with enough interest in writing style to use em-dashes instead of parentheses."

But I'm not on a Mac right now so I don't know how to even make a real one at the moment other than that LaTeX method.

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machinate ◴[30 Aug 25 05:30 UTC] No.45072109[source]▶
Easy is almost an understatement; it's Alt+Hyphen. [Edit: My bad that's en-dash, can't tell the difference in this monospaced text field. Em-dash you have to hold shift.]

I guess on Windows it's Alt+0,1,5,1 on a numpad. Or you copy+paste from Character Map.

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e28eta ◴[30 Aug 25 05:32 UTC] No.45072118[source]▶
To be pedantic: Opt-shift-hyphen for the em dash (longer one). Opt-hyphen only gets you an en dash.
replies(3): >>45072180 #>>45072185 #>>45072992 #
9dev ◴[30 Aug 25 05:49 UTC] No.45072180[source]▶
…which is the appropriate character for ranges, i.e., page 1–2.

I find it a bit sad that using proper typography is now frowned upon, but it seems that ship has sailed.

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1. Symbiote ◴[30 Aug 25 08:02 UTC] No.45072821[source]▶
From the discussion with our head of communications (whose pedantry I approve of) US usage avoids spaces—like this—and should use an em-dash.

But British usage – instead – uses spaces, so an en-dash or an em-dash is acceptable.

replies(1): >>45074735 #
2. d1sxeyes ◴[30 Aug 25 13:57 UTC] No.45074735[source]▶
Generally spaces around em-dashes is a question of style, not pre- or pro-scribed by any specific typographical rule. One nice middle ground is a hair space ( ), although it’s a pain to insert.
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3. 1659447091 ◴[30 Aug 25 22:11 UTC] No.45078440[source]▶
> spaces around em-dashes is a question of style, not pre- or pro-scribed by any specific typographical rule

Writing and publishing style guides like Hart's Rules (Oxford Style Guide) & Chicago manual of style have the 'em' dash use as a parenthetical closed or "no spaces" dash.

In British use – Hart's Rules – writers will choose the 'en' dash with spaces as a parenthetical dash, where US writers/publishers choose the closed 'em' dash for the same thing.

Imo, there is a conflation of 'en' dash and 'em' dash going around due to the ease of smart-dashes auto-correction turning (--) into 'em' dash with the 'en' dash and non-auto-correct 'em' dash needing a key-combo.

Common everyday typing online, I think people will simply use what is convenient and "good enough" -- a single hyphen dash as an 'en' dash or 2-hyphen dashes that may or may not auto correct into an 'em' dash. I prefer mixing spaces with a 2-hyphen dash 'em' dash, but I'm not a published writer so I enjoy doing wild things like that

4. andrewaylett ◴[30 Aug 25 22:12 UTC] No.45078445[source]▶
I configured my Markdown renderer to replace ` -- ` with " — ". Hopefully those narrow spaces make it through HN's rendering — it's much easier when your tooling can do the job for you.

https://github.com/andrewaylett/aylett.co.uk/blob/d338d35a3d...