richeddy shared this post · 3h ago
Joe Wyer

If you want people to read your stuff please follow Orwell's rules. These LLMs are not ...

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If you want people to read your stuff please follow Orwell's rules. These LLMs are not your friends. They write with so much damn passive voice, incoherent figures of speech, and unnecessary -ly words.

Orwell's rules:

  1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

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If I see "it's quietly...", "that's not X, it's Y", "what this is, and what it isn't" I stop reading.

Ryan Edkins Cutting the passive voice is the fastest tell whether a human actually touched the draft before it went out. 16h ago
Joe Wyer Author Yes, and I'm still reading stuff from humans with a lot of passive voice too. 9h ago
dave does anyone feel the difference in tone between models. Gemini seems optimist and encouraging and Claude is just cynical. What's with that 4h ago