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

(www.gally.net)
358 points tkgally | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | 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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sinuhe69 ◴[30 Aug 25 15:22 UTC] No.45075413[source]▶
How do people type em dash on the keyboard? On iOS you have to long-press the dash key, on a hardware full keyboard you have to key-in the code(?). That’s all very cumbersome and unnatural! Why people bother using em dash at all?
replies(2): >>45075425 #>>45075432 #
1. pxx ◴[30 Aug 25 15:24 UTC] No.45075425[source]▶
there are shortcuts but they can also compose their response in a richer text editor then paste. matched quotation marks also typically show up.