Comment by tkgally
5 hours ago
Somewhat related, the leaderboard of em-dash users on HN before ChatGPT:
https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderbo...
5 hours ago
Somewhat related, the leaderboard of em-dash users on HN before ChatGPT:
https://www.gally.net/miscellaneous/hn-em-dash-user-leaderbo...
They should include users who used a double hyphen, too -- not everyone has easy access to em dashes.
That would false positive me. I have used double dashes to delimit quote attribution for decades.
Like this:
"You can't believe everything you read on the internet." -- Abraham Lincoln, personal correspondence, 1863
Does AI use double hyphens? I thought the point was to find who wasn't AI that used proper em dashes.
Anytime I do this — and I did it long before AI did — they are always em dashes, because iOS/macOS translates double dashes to em dashes.
I think there may be a way to disable this, but I don’t care enough to bother.
If people want to think my posts are AI generated, oh well.
10 replies →
Oof, I feel like you'll accidentally capture a lot of getopt_long() fans. ;)
Excluding those with asymmetrical whitespace around might be enough
Apparently, it's not only em-dash that's distinctive. I've went through comments of the leader, and spot he also uses the backtick "’" instead of the apostrophe.
Just to be clear this is done automatically by macOS or iOS browsers when configured properly.
I (~100 in the leaderboard, regardless of how you sort) also frequently use ’ (unicode apostrophe) instead of ' :D