Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are probably like me: if punctuation isn't on my keyboard, I don't use it.
⸘WHAT‽
Neat, I didn't know there was an upside down interrobang.
I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
381–390 of 533 posts
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#382I had a similar experience. We were talking about a colleague for using ChatGPT in our WhatsApp group chat to sound smart and coming up with interesting points. The talk sounds so mechanical and sounds exactly as ChatGPT. His responses in Zoom Calls were the same mechanical and sounds like AI generated. I even checked one of his responses in WhatsApp if it's AI by asking the Meta AI whether it's AI written, and Meta…
It is harsh to say, but we need to increasingly recognize that if your writing is largely indistinguishable from the (current) output of e.g. ChatGPT on default settings, it doesn't matter if you used ChatGPT or not, your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume, and something you most certainly need to improve. I.e. your colleague needs to change his style regardless. This sucks, but it needs to be…
> your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume
Was this written by AI? Because right there we've got "three adjectives where one will do", and failing your own advice on "avoid being overly verbose"
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
"He walked up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He strode up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He sidled up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He tromped up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" Each of those sentences conveys as slightly different action. You can almost imagine the person's face has a different expression in each version. Yes, I hate it when amateurs just search/rep…
The Hawaiian language has a concept called Kaona, which is essentially embedding deeper meanings in contextual word choices. It can go way beyond the literal meaning of the words, and tie into bigger concepts of culture, lineage, and places. It's super cool hearing about it from native speakers. We don't really do it intentionally in English, at least to the same degree. But there's still a lot of information coded i…
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Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm definitely in the "ChatGPT writes like me" experience. I am a big fan of lists, and of using formatting to make it all legible on a short skim. I'm a big fan of dyslexia-friendly writing too, even though I am not dyslexic myslef. I can't blame others though- I was looking at notes I wrote in 2019 and even that gave me a flavor of looking like a ChatGPT wrote it. I use the word "delve" and "not just X but also Y o…
> dyslexia-friendly writing ... How does that work, exactly?
Namely, keeping things short and simple, and using formatting like bullet points or holding for important information to make text easier to scan.
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#385This author writes in ESL better than 99% of the people I've worked with in an English-native country, including myself. It's fascinating to read just how much more emphasis good-quality written English seems to have in Kenya than it does here in Australia (at least in the public education system where I have experience). I suppose that it's understandable, given that it gates access to higher-level education opportu…
I don't think the author mentioned that English is their second language. English is an official language of Kenya, and there's a reasonable chance it's the author's home language.
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obsession with short sentences and generally pushing extreme simplicity of structure and word choice has been terrible for English prose. It’s not been terrible because most people aren’t aided by such guidance (most are) but because the same people who can’t be trusted to wield a quill without the bumper-lanes installed see a sentence longer than ten words, or a semicolon, or god forbid literate and appropriate nuan…
"He walked up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He strode up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He sidled up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He tromped up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" Each of those sentences conveys as slightly different action. You can almost imagine the person's face has a different expression in each version. Yes, I hate it when amateurs just search/rep…
Even more simply:
"God rest ye merry gentlemen" changes in tone and meaning depending on where you put the comma in that sentence.
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#387> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…
>I'm a native English speaker that studied writing in university
I am a native english speaker who had to unlearn OP's writing style to pass my tertiary education. In particular I sat an english bridging course for non english speakers. I was often told off for "editorialising" and wasting space with useless descriptions.
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is harsh to say, but we need to increasingly recognize that if your writing is largely indistinguishable from the (current) output of e.g. ChatGPT on default settings, it doesn't matter if you used ChatGPT or not, your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume, and something you most certainly need to improve. I.e. your colleague needs to change his style regardless. This sucks, but it needs to be…
> your writing is overly verbose, bad, and unpleasant to consume Was this written by AI? Because right there we've got "three adjectives where one will do", and failing your own advice on "avoid being overly verbose"
It is up to the reader to judge whether my style is verbose, or if I could have used less adjectives here. The adjectives all in fact have different meanings, only "bad" is lazy, IMO (EDIT: and "bad" is meant to be obvious moralizing - something AI in fact almost never does).
Don't think that I don't hold myself to the same standards I am pushing here, verbosity has always been a problem for me, and AI verbosity is a good and necessary reminder for me to curb it.
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#389What gets me these days is sort of this structure.
X isnt just Y its a Z!
Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are probably like me: if punctuation isn't on my keyboard, I don't use it.
Yeah, this is what I don't understand, surely people aren't "using" em dashes deliberately. I assumed MS word was just inserting them automatically when the user used a minus symbol between two words. Kind of like angled quotes.
update: I read that word will place an em dash if you use two dashes "--"