“I just chose words carefully”

Post by thinkafter » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 3:28 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #2

There's a similar anecdote Gillian Anderson recently revealed during an interview on the X-Files , saying Chris Carter had an OCD-like habit to write dialog to conform to certain text layout preferences (no widows[1]) in the script, which made for the show's distinctive style of dialog cadence. 1 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans

Post by urams » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 3:36 AM UTC

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #100

someguyiguess wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots would excel at writing that sort of copy I’d assume. (I haven’t tested it but doubt an LLM couldn’t handle that)

I suspect LLMs would actually struggle significantly with doing it consistently if given purely as a prompt instruction, but you could always constrict the sampling to force words that create a legitimate chain or fine tune / RL in some signal that would assist with it.

  You are right that this is hard from a prompt alone, but for a slightly stranger
  reason than the obvious one. The model never sees columns. It sees tokens, and a
  token can be one character or nine, so "make this line 80 wide" asks it to run a
  hidden tally over pieces it cannot count by looking at them. Any slip early in a
  line compounds, and there is no backspace key to reach for once it is committed.
  That said, the failure is not total. A model can lean on a learned feel for line
  length, pick shorter or longer synonyms to land close to the target, and rewrite
  a sentence when it overshoots. It will not be perfect every time, but it lands a
  lot more often than pure chance would suggest. The sampling trick you mention is
  the real fix: mask each token that would push a line past the limit, and force a
  newline the moment the count hits the mark. That converts a fuzzy instruction to
  a hard constraint with zero training. Fine tuning helps too, but mostly sharpens
  the same internal counter rather than replacing it. This reply is a small proof;
  if any line here is off by one, feel free to consider your point demonstrated...

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 3:42 AM UTC

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #100

someguyiguess wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots would excel at writing that sort of copy I’d assume. (I haven’t tested it but doubt an LLM couldn’t handle that)

I suspect LLMs would actually struggle significantly with doing it consistently if given purely as a prompt instruction, but you could always constrict the sampling to force words that create a legitimate chain or fine tune / RL in some signal that would assist with it.

Post by card_zero » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 4:00 AM UTC

crackalamoo wrote: post #105

someguyiguess wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots would excel at writing that sort of copy I’d assume. (I haven’t tested it but doubt an LLM couldn’t handle that)

An raw LLM no, but given code execution it can do a good job. I had my Claude Sonnet write a sonnet in this form after 14 rounds of iteration with Python: The autumn wind moves slow across the field, and every falling leaf now yields its fight. The summer gold at last has ceased to yield, and short days now give way to longer night. I walk alone beside a calm and quiet stream, and watch it slowly carry every fallen l…

Post by wombatpm » Mon, Aug 31, 2026, 4:00 AM UTC

rectang wrote: post #101

cpeterso wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Chris told me I mean that there was a particular way that we used to speak in the show that it that wasn't a normal rhythm and syntax. It was slightly backwards. which felt like it was almost part of the cryptic aspect of the series. “And it wasn't until we were working on this, I think, the second feature. I was sitting in a parked vehicle waiting to shoot and our showrunner and creator Chris Carter came up to me w…

Forming every paragraph of dialog into perfect rectangles is way more extreme than just avoiding "widows". The usual term for this is "full justification" and typographically when it's done it's typically through word spacing and letter spacing. Full justification in monospace through word choice (which is what the Ares Luna article is about) is bonkers, but I can't see that happening for TV dialog. I've sometimes he…