Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT
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
Hacker News em dash user leaderboard pre-ChatGPT launched on August 30, 2025 with 377 votes, #76 of 8,530 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
This tool ranks Hacker News users by their pre-ChatGPT em dash usage in posts before November 30, 2022. Created for language enthusiasts and those curious about writing patterns, it analyzes the Hacker News database through Google BigQuery to identify which users most frequently used the em dash punctuation mark. The leaderboard reveals that the em dash was a notable stylistic choice among early HN posters, before its prevalence became associated with AI-generated text.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Another, more complete version of this leaderboard is here . And the HN discussion about this leaderboard is herefrom gally.net
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