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

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358 points tkgally | 1 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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ThatMedicIsASpy ◴[30 Aug 25 06:24 UTC] No.45072356[source]▶
I have started using triple dots as on Linux I can get them with Alt Gr + .

A lot of symbols can be accessed with Alt Gr compared to Windows

replies(2): >>45072500 #>>45072731 #
notpushkin ◴[30 Aug 25 06:58 UTC] No.45072500[source]▶
Please don’t... Adding ellipsis as a separate character was a huge mistake, because it doesn’t work well:

- you can’t make a ?.. or !.. with it

- the spacing between the dots is awful in a lot of fonts

- it is hideous in monospace

- typing ellipsis properly is a very easy gesture (triple-tap the dot key), arguably easier than Alt Gr + . (depending on the keyboard)

replies(4): >>45072546 #>>45072554 #>>45072667 #>>45072813 #
dragonwriter ◴[30 Aug 25 07:08 UTC] No.45072546[source]▶
> you can’t make a ?.. or !.. with it

But an ellipsis is separate from and doesn't mmerge with sentence-terminal punctuation, whether its a period or somethig else (when it replaces words at the end of a sentence, the terminal punctuation follows the ellipsis, when at the beginning of a sentence that follows another, the ellipsis follows the punctuation.) The constructs you say can't be formed with it aren't needed.

replies(2): >>45072612 #>>45072725 #
notpushkin ◴[30 Aug 25 07:22 UTC] No.45072612[source]▶
Hmm, yeah, you’re right – in English this isn’t really used. However it’s a widely used punctuation in Russian (and many ex-USSR languages, too), so... no, they are needed in some cases.
replies(1): >>45074260 #
layer8 ◴[30 Aug 25 13:00 UTC] No.45074260{3}[source]▶
If that is accurate, you’d have a good chance of getting a corresponding Unicode proposal accepted.
replies(1): >>45080585 #
1. notpushkin ◴[31 Aug 25 05:25 UTC] No.45080585{4}[source]▶
It doesn’t really make sense to me – those new characters would mostly just look the same as the combination of symbols used right now, be harder to type, and share all of the other flaws I’ve mentioned above. Might be fun though!