How to Write with an LLM Without Losing Your Voice
A seasoned writer shares a practical method for using LLMs as copyeditors, not ghostwriters. The key: never use a single word an LLM suggests, and forbid the model from offering encouragement. Instead, leverage its tireless ability to flag problems—passive voice, filler words, awkward paragraph placement—while you do the rewriting. The result: faster, better writing that still sounds like you.
You may not use a single word an LLM suggests to you.
- nirava
I've found the only good way to write with LLMs is to absolutely not use it for the first few drafts, the using it as a tool to list specific kinds of problems in text (word repetition, unnatural hard to read sentences etc) and approaching those points with caution and skepticism. Even copy pasting a single sentence, I've found, is a slippery slope.
- S-E-P
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.
- thombles
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.
- pmg101
It's extremely refreshing reading good human prose isn't it! It's like when I would read a newly-written Paul Graham essay 20 years ago.
He also uses rule of three and the phrase "load-bearing", just for fun, which elicited a wry smile from me.
Thanks OP for a pleasant start to my day!
- Retr0id
> Present the original and new writing to the model and ask it which is better.
LLMs have absolutely terrible taste when it comes to writing. I don't find their feedback useful at all, beyond trivial spelling/grammar mistakes, which you don't really need an LLM for in the first place.
Proofreading is all you need.
Edit: I do sometimes ask an LLM for a fact-check, though.
- ACV001
just don't use it for writing
- thunfischtoast
I think it's good advice. I find it a bit funny the author said to not use a single word coming out of the LLM, but they probably did just that because I never heard a human being say "load-bearing" before but now it's all over the place, also used here. Or I don't get the irony.
- jjhfarmer
Writing is thinking. You are outsourcing the process of thinking through your thoughts so you can communicate and understand them.