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demibabstoday at 10:41 AM4 repliesview on HN

> Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end.

Example of this? I don’t have a Claude sub so it’s a bit hard to visualize what you mean.


Replies

gwdtoday at 3:02 PM

Here's an actual output from Claude from a conversation about rewording a document to make it more readable:

> Start with §1 (Overview) as the register-calibration piece. It's small, it's the section where the skimmability goal bites hardest, and your review of it teaches me the target voice cheaply before the bulk ports (the map and appendix B are the big volume). One review round on §1 is worth more than any amount of me guessing at register.

Hard-to-read phraseology above:

- "the register-calibration piece", rather than "a good example we can use to establish the writing style"

- "skimmability"

- "bites hardest" -- what does it mean for the goal to bite?

- "bulk ports" -- using "porting software" here as an analogy for rewriting / reorganizing sections of the document

- "the big volume"

In normal English I'd write something like the following:

"Start with rewriting §1 (Overview), and letting you review it to set the expected writing style. It's small, and it's a section where the ability to skim through it is most important. Reviewing it will teach me the target 'voice' cheaply, before we do the larger sections (like the map and appendix B). That's a lot more efficient than me trying to guess while rewriting the whole document."

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jstummbilligtoday at 10:41 AM

What they wrote is an example. Very meta.

ahartmetztoday at 10:47 AM

It feels like they have a bunch of people without good sense of writing style tune the writing style. That, or they cannot or refuse to (short term popularity metrics) predict how a tuning will turn out in the long run when people have plenty of opportunity to get tired of it.

KptMarchewatoday at 11:06 AM

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