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358 points tkgally | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 03:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.359s | 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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zdw ◴[30 Aug 25 03:58 UTC] No.45071806[source]▶

>>45071722 (OP) #

I applaud this data. But how are people actually creating an em-dash in the "add comment" box? Some non-obvious OS-level shortcut?

replies(6): >>45071821 #>>45071823 #>>45071832 #>>45071860 #>>45071911 #>>45077921 #

1. Kungfuturtle ◴[30 Aug 25 20:54 UTC] No.45077921[source]▶

>>45071806 #

I've long been a fan of the em dash—one of the first things I did when I migrated back from OSX to Windows was to set up an AutoHotKey function to map <Alt>+<-> to an em dash.

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