"Those rethinks are load-bearing parts of your voice."

Loved the (possibly not deliberately ironic) use of the LLM'S favourite analogy, load-bearing.

Nice wee article though. I particularly agree with "Don’t take all of the model’s copyediting advice." I've been using LLMs to review teaching material and often it just doesn't get the point of teaching. It's good for prompting reflection on your writing but it's still an idiot savant.

This article was so much better than what I though it would be

Does anyone know about "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace" ? Seems like an interesting book

I fear in the future people will read even less because of how often people cheap out and use AI to write. I know the author of this article tells you never to use a single word it suggests, however I still, while reading, am checking for any amount of AI used. This makes reading less enjoyable, and even a bit stressful.

If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?

Everything I post is from my own finger tips, only to get a reply from someone using a bot. I'm tired.

I've seen this in action as well. The biggest value by far is seeing the overused phrases and tics in your writing style. The prompt I like is to tell it to highlight and flag passive voice and run ons since those are my major pain points. I can also tell when its getting out of "real" advice since it'll offer the same "trim 10-15%". Also important to tell it to highlight specifics otherwise it'll give vague editorial advice that isn't anchored. Another fun exercise is to submit other authors writing as well. Say a short story from a magazine. Some of the edits are legit, but do it enough times and you'll start to see the same generic writing advice gets applies to just about any input.

another iteresting thing models can do is to highlight and notice themes and motifs in a piece. I find that helpful when thinking about a piece of work. Might be obvious ones, sometimes it can be subtle themes. Good for stirring your own brain.

> use them like a copyeditor rather than a ghostwriter

This is what you need to know. Seriously, after 25 years in news (writing), you realize that you need “second eyes”, not the first hands.

This is similar to how I've come to use them but it's focused too much on the mechanics or writing. I've found them more valuable at role-playing as a specific profile of reader and asking it how they would receive the arguments advanced by the writing and what counterarguments they could present. After some rounds of this process, you either close all the gaps in the argument or realize it's not a strong one.

It's darkly amusing that while the author advises us not to let LLMs pick our words, their post includes this chunk of AI slop:

"Those rethinks are load-bearing parts of your voice. Readers won’t put their fingers on what’s wrong, but they’ll sense that you’ve become artificially-flavored."

The metaphor at the start is AI-like weirdness too: "without pasteurizing and jacking it with corn syrup." Pasteurising is good, corn syrup is bad - what the heck am I supposed to make of it? It's nonsense.

It may even have been handwritten by the author, but it's slop nonetheless.

You may be telling yourself that you're disciplined and you're just using the LLMs for review. But while you're reading their output, the slop makes its way directly into your brain anyway - and then it drips out into your writing.

> How to Write with an LLM

TLDR: Don’t.

Even if you don't want style advice from an LLM (I generally don't, not for blogging), for a technical blogger "please check this post for factual accuracy" is a good way to not look like an idiot. Often it complains about hyperbole, which I tend to ignore since there's no point blogging unless you have some firm opinions, but on at least one occasion it pointed me towards some documentation that undermined my entire post - and led to a much better one a week later once I'd processed and applied that new information. Thanks, LLM.