Tag: writing
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When to use AI for writing, and when it’s totally acceptable
If you’re dyslexic and just trying to communicate more clearly in writing, or you’ve got a bullshit job and you just want to get your bullshit job’s bullshit tasks out of the way so you can move on to more meaningful endeavors, or at least move past the day-to-day slog that permeates your workday and…
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After years of playing [solo role-playing], I have developed a personal rule about rolling dice: only roll if the potential outcome advances _or _enhances _the narrative. If rolling would throw the story off track in a way that doesn’t _enhance the narrative or creates an unnecessary or nonsensical detour, I won’t roll. Also, an interesting…
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Keep the thesis in mind. ‘Writers must […] constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it?’ 🔗 Notes from “On Writing Well”
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“Yes, a book about parking can be fascinating.” 2025 in Review: Reading and Writing Highlights
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To understand a man, you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty, Napoleon is supposed to have said. The quotation is probably apocryphal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. For me, it is this world by the river that counts. When I sit down to write a novel,…
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Another writer said he “was a confident, gray-eyed, wild-bearded, chain-smoking philosopher-poet who lived on whiskey and ice cream and never went to bed before 4 a.m.” From Rebels of Reason
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The ongoing existential quandary of corporate presentations and meetings: “PowerPoint’s job is simply to help you survive the presentation.” The full thought: it doesn’t exactly help you communicate something (you do that in Word, or Excel); or coordinate something (you do that in Outlook, or nowadays Slack). PowerPoint’s job is simply to help you survive…
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Sometimes, you accidentally delete a paragraph of text and it’s not in the undo buffer for some reason. And most of those times, it’s good to think: I probably didn’t need that anyhow.
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Woke fonts. I wasn’t sure what size they used for Courier New.1 How I long for the all business, utilitarian thrill of Courier New… It was a simpler time. From the original memo, it looks like 12 point? ↩
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A house style that intentionally enforces a neutral voice without strong opinions is often an unintentionally ironic mask for your company having neither.
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The AI Apprentice’s Adventures
I’ve been wondering why the quality and ease of making stuff with AI has not resulting in a creative explosion. In particular with just a hefty dose of prompt-craft, you can get great D&D stuff. I’m guessing part of the reason is that the incumbent gate-keepers hate AI. They, rightly, see it as a threat…
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Reject the rejection of your writing voice especially when you’re writing “enterprise grade” copy
More Writing Advice Once you identify your style, try pushing back against some suggested changes. People reviewing your work don’t always edit with your style in mind and will think it’s appropriate to change it. This is especially true in business writing, where people expect a sort of neutral, flat tone. That can be great…
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“There is so much road in American roads. They widen and narrow like rivers, now six lanes, now twelve, now, but surely not?, fourteen, with various slip roads, merging lanes, separate roads running parallel behind a wall. Road, road, road, stretching out ahead of you towards the mountains.” Henry Oliver
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The Rule of Threes
Unless you’re skilled otherwise, always present, think, and communicate in sets of three. It’s not always the best, but it’s always the optimal mix of works and doable. As he says, you can also go with just one idea explained three different ways. If you’re lucky enough to have just one idea you need to…
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An enchanting annoyance
‘When we say, “I love my job,” we really mean, “My job pisses me off, but in an enchanting way.”’ Thank you for being annoying
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32 notes on AI & writing – “AI is better than most humans at producing prose. In a couple years, it will be better than most “professional writers” as well. Most text is not creative. Emails, policy papers, reported news. It does not desire to surprise or delight. It aims to convey ideas and information…
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🤖 ChatGPT’s Love Affair with the Em Dash Sparks a Punctuation Panic
This is a summary from ChatGPT. Source summarized: With the Em Dash, A.I. Embraces a Fading Tradition AI’s persistent use of the em dash has triggered a minor cultural freakout online, with many insisting it’s a “tell” that instantly reveals machine-generated text. Yet the dash is a centuries-old punctuation mark beloved by novelists and grammarians,…
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“Executize this” -> “write this for someone who doesn’t care about the topic but needs to deal with it for their job.”
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How to use AI to write conference talk abstracts, good ones
“GenAI can help you write talk proposals, but if you use it without injecting your own curiosity and humanness, reviewers can tell. Here’s the process I use to shape real, human abstracts that reflect my curiosity and experience. I developed this process for technical talks, but it adapts well to other formats too.” From Whitney.
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