How To Write With An LLM

Summary

How To Write With An LLM Thomas Ptacek on using LLMs as copyeditors, not as writing assistants: Rule Number One: You may not use a single word an LLM suggests to you. [...] I think that as a form of intellectual personal protective equipment you should adopt the rule that any specific turn of phrase an LLM suggests is off limits. Be strict about the rule! I won't let LLMs write content for my blog, but I use them for fact-checking, spelling and grammar and as an occasional thesaurus (see my proofreading prompt ). The rule to never use a turn of phrase suggested by an LLM feels good to me. The text has that weird smell to it, and it's also a good principle to help stay disciplined. Later in this piece Thomas shows a screenshot of his personal LLM copyediting tool (see also this Twitter thread ), and provides a prompt to help kickstart building your own. Update : Thomas also shared his system prompt in a comment on Hacker News. Tags: thomas-ptacek , writing , ai , generative-ai , llms

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