4 ms·

I haven't seen a lot of excessive formatting in human-written text. These are all much more LLM-isms to my eye.

byproxy 8mo ago
This is unfortunate, because (and probably much to the article writer's chagrin), I am a fan of making use of the formatting tools available for a given platform. When convenient, I love using an em/en-dash. And, when I'm up for it, italicizing and bolding words to convey prosody. It just feels right. Now, though, I may be dismissed as an LLM (probably as an older model that can't quite use them formatting tools effectively).
- furyofantares 8mo ago
  I'm speaking more of excessive headings for small sections, which are themselves just bullet point lists, all of this highly nested. That's the main thing demonstrated in the post here. The LLM writing is basically infodump. Lists dressed up in different ways (sections, bullet points, nested bullet points, and sequences of "[bold]Blah blah[/bold]: blah blah blah" sentences.
- exmadscientist 8mo ago
  I've been called out more than once for using too much italics in my writing. But the trick is I usually write like I would speak. This leads to italicizing any word or phrase I'd speak emphatically. (Which, yes, I've also been called out for doing a lot when I speak. So what; I've also been told I'm good at getting my point across. I'll take it!) In any text important enough to go through multiple revisions, or to be written from the start with multiple revisions in mind, this characteristic is diminished. But most text is more throwaway, just like most speech, so it gets left a little rough. This also tends to feel pretty natural. If you read LLM-written text out loud, or the prose TFA is talking about, it... does not feel natural at all. So what I'm trying to say is: some level of emphasis is just fine. Don't overthink it.
exmadscientist 8mo ago
I think it's getting more and more common, quickly. The obvious inference is that people are using LLMs a lot and starting to mimic them, consciously or unconsciously. (Probably the latter: if people have weak internal models of how to write well, being around a lot of LLM text can probably influence them pretty quickly.)
- furyofantares 8mo ago
  Maybe. But I think you might just be reading LLM output more often than you think you are.
  - exmadscientist 8mo ago
    That's sadly possible. When I've noticed this it's been in contexts where things lean against text being fully LLM-generated but... who the hell knows.

This is unfortunate, because (and probably much to the article writer's chagrin), I am a fan of making use of the formatting tools available for a given platform. When convenient, I love using an em/en-dash. And, when I'm up for it, italicizing and bolding words to convey prosody. It just feels right. Now, though, I may be dismissed as an LLM (probably as an older model that can't quite use them formatting tools effectively).

furyofantares 8mo ago
I'm speaking more of excessive headings for small sections, which are themselves just bullet point lists, all of this highly nested. That's the main thing demonstrated in the post here. The LLM writing is basically infodump. Lists dressed up in different ways (sections, bullet points, nested bullet points, and sequences of "[bold]Blah blah[/bold]: blah blah blah" sentences.
exmadscientist 8mo ago
I've been called out more than once for using too much italics in my writing. But the trick is I usually write like I would speak. This leads to italicizing any word or phrase I'd speak emphatically. (Which, yes, I've also been called out for doing a lot when I speak. So what; I've also been told I'm good at getting my point across. I'll take it!) In any text important enough to go through multiple revisions, or to be written from the start with multiple revisions in mind, this characteristic is diminished. But most text is more throwaway, just like most speech, so it gets left a little rough. This also tends to feel pretty natural. If you read LLM-written text out loud, or the prose TFA is talking about, it... does not feel natural at all. So what I'm trying to say is: some level of emphasis is just fine. Don't overthink it.

exmadscientist 8mo ago

I think it's getting more and more common, quickly. The obvious inference is that people are using LLMs a lot and starting to mimic them, consciously or unconsciously. (Probably the latter: if people have weak internal models of how to write well, being around a lot of LLM text can probably influence them pretty quickly.)

furyofantares 8mo ago
Maybe. But I think you might just be reading LLM output more often than you think you are.
- exmadscientist 8mo ago
  That's sadly possible. When I've noticed this it's been in contexts where things lean against text being fully LLM-generated but... who the hell knows.