Because they're self-aware perfectionists and are actively working to stop it, because they reach for all kinds of tools like grammar checkers and AI, but they're aware that using those will make the post lose "their" voice, or the human element of the post.

And that's, I think, a valid choice; you can choose to use all the tools and make something gramatically and stylistically as close to perfect, but who would want to read something as dry? That's for formal writing, and blog posts are not formal.

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surgical_fire 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Reading what you write for editing does not make a text lose your voice. If anything, it amplifies it, you get to ensure that what you intended to say was said.

Not reading what you write smells more like laziness.

Same thing for spell checks, grammar checks, and even AI usage. If you use things lazily, the result will be lazy as well.

Instead of asking for an AI tool to write your thoughts in your place, you can write it yourself and ask it to criticize your text, instruct it to not rewrite anything, only give you an overall picture of text clarity, sentiment, etc.

But that of course would require more work. Asking ChatGPT to produce a text based on a lazily written, bullet point list of brainfarts is probably easier.

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jychang 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Great! That's a good thing. Embrace being human sometimes.

Plus, "lazy" would actually be just using AI to edit the writing.

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watwut 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> instruct it to not rewrite anything, only give you an overall picture of text clarity, sentiment, etc.

LLM cant really do that. It can help you produce correct sentence where you struggle to create own, but it does not have capabilities to do what you suggest.

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jmmv 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It sounds like you haven't tried.

LLMs definitely can do this. The output tends to be overly positive though, claiming that any sort of rough draft you give them is "great, almost ready for publishing!". But the feedback you can get on clarity, narrative flow, weak spots... _is_ usually pretty good.

Now, following that feedback to the letter is going to end up with a diluted message and boring voice, so it's up to you to do with the feedback whatever you think best.

	▲	surgical_fire an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Btw, this is precisely what I implied. I never ask the LLM to evaluate my text in terms of being good or bad. Instead I try something like this: "In this section I tried to explain X, I intended to sound in Y and Z fashion, and I want a reader to come out with ateast W impression. Is the text achieving these goals? Do I communicate my ideas clearly and consisely, or are they too confuse and meandering?" I typically get useful feedback. I preface specifically asking it to not rewrite, simply pointing the bits that it finds faulty and explaining why. Of course the prompt is different is I am writing, for example, technical documentation, or if it is an attempt at creative writing.

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surgical_fire 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What? LLMs are very capable of doing sentiment analysis. Hell, it's basically one of the things it actually excels at - understanding tone, nuance, context, etc.

I used it many times for exactly this, with good results. It points out ambiguous contructs, parts that are dissonant from the tone I intend, etc.

I have no idea why you think that LLMs can't do that lol

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watwut 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Sentiment analysis for the purpose of categorizing reddit comments, sure. For the purpose of giving you advice about nuance, overall clarity and tone of own long test, no.

	▲	surgical_fire 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I tried it myself, and it did actually a good job. There's nothing magical about a long text you write yourself vs a stream o reddit comments in a thread. It's all sentiment analysis on text. It can extract ambiguity, how ideas are connected in the context, categorize and summarize, etc. You should try it and see it for yourself. Feed it some large text of a single author and ask it to do those things, see if the results are satisfactory.

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fallinditch 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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watwut 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you use grammar checker as a grammar checker, it wont make you loose your voice. It will make you use correct grammar.

> you can choose to use all the tools and make something gramatically and stylistically as close to perfect, but who would want to read something as dry

If it is dry, then it is not stylistically perfect. Per definition, dry writing is just an imperfect writing. Stylistically perfect writing does not have to be dry and usually is not dry.

What happens here is that people use "stylistically perfect" when they mean "followed a bad stylistic advice".

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jerukmangga 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I see both sides here. Wanting to preserve your natural voice is valid, but editing and using tools don't necessarily take that away. In fact, they can help make your intended message clearer. It probably comes down to how much control you keep over the final result rather than wheater you use tools at all.

	▲	watwut 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What annoys me here is that people say "I use AI as style checker to make my writing better" or claim that good writing is unfairly judged as being by AI ... and then proceed to describe inferior writing results they achieved with AI. None of what author wrote there signals that the way he uses AI made his writing better. His use of AI made his output inferior. And not just in a the "loosing own voice" way worst, but literally in the "the final text is less effective writing". I do not mean this comment to be kick against AI. It is very good for some stuff, it is less good for other stuff. What annoys me is someone calling output superior while actually complaining about it being inferior. Hey, maybe that llm needs to be used differently to achieve actually good writing results.

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vixen99 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

lose!