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skydhash | 12 hours ago

One of the good book about writing I read was William Zinsser's "On Writing Well". Striving for simplicity and avoiding clutter was the two first principles described in the book. AI writing feels more like ramblings than communication.

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nz|11 hours ago

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about florid and elaborate writing (e.g. Faulkner, Lispector, Mieville, Mossman, Joyce, Austen, etc)?

addaon|11 hours ago

I do not think Faulkner would write very good C++ library documentation.

I would read the hell out of Joyce’s Perl 5 documentation, but only after six or seven beers.

rsynnott|9 hours ago

There's an art to it. Most human attempts, and every LLM attempt I've ever seen, are awful, sometimes bordering on unreadable, but, as you say, there are a relatively small number of authors who do it well. That doesn't mean that most people should do it.

skydhash|10 hours ago

I'm a French speaker and florid and elaborate writing is something I've grown up with. It can be difficult if you don't know the word or are not used to the style, but it's not boring. AI writing is just repetitive.

tayo42|11 hours ago

When I've used AI for proofreading the suggestions it makes to me is to cut a lot and shorten it. It also gives me examples, never with my voice or style though.