358 points tkgally | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | 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.
Agreed, I love the emdash, and I have 20 years' worth of online writings that are positively peppered with those flat fellas. I have no intention of abandoning the character yet, but the future may be a bleak place for handsomely-formatted asides. It gives one pause.