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Comment by christianqchung | Hacker News Reader

This is not accusatory, but do you write your comments with AI? I checked your profile and someone else had the same question a few days ago. It's the persistent structure of "it isn't X – it's Y" with the em dash (– not -) that makes me wonder this. Nothing to add to your comment otherwise, sorry.

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Sorry for being pedantic but they are using an en dash (–) not an em dash (—) which is a little strange because the latter is usually the one meant for adding information in secondary sentences—like commas and and parentheses. In addition, in most styles, you're not supposed to add spaces around it.

So, I don't think the comment is AI-generated for this reason.

"The en-dash is also increasingly used to replace the long dash ('—', also called an em dash or em rule). When using it to replace a long dash, spaces are needed either side of it – like so." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_(typography)

You're right, oops. I agree with your reasoning (comment still gives off slop vibes but that's unprovable). But the parent has been flagged, so I'm not sure if that means admins/dang has agreed with me or if it was flagged for another reason.

I think anyone can flag a comment, and if enough people flag a comment, it will become flagged.

em-dash is shift-option-hyphen on macOS, so it's not a good heuristic—I use it myself.

They're using en-dash which is even easier: option-hyphen.

This is the wrong way to do AI detection. For one, LLM would have used the right dash. But at least find someone wasting our time with belabored or overwrought text that doesn't even interact with anything.

This is definitely AI, repetitive and reads in style of a marketing copy / sensational report.

They're not "definitely" an AI. Sounds like a normal Go enthusiast to me.

A Go enthusiast who’s never heard of esbuild? Not impossible, but unlikely.

So, a go enthusiast who does exclusively backend work? Seems likely enough, given that community's overall disdain for Javascript.

You know, some humans use the correct dash too...

The em dash thing is not very conclusive. I have been writing with the em dash for many years, because it looks better and is very accessible on Mac OS (long press on dash key), while carrying a different tone than the simple dash. That, and I read some Tristram Shandy.

Two hyphens (-) make a em dash (—) on Apple devices and many word processors.

In the pre-Unicode days, people would use two hyphens (--) to simulate em dashes.

That would explain a lot.

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