Hacker News with Generative AI: Writing

ChatGPT Is a Gimmick (hedgehogreview.com)
I recently attended a workshop on teaching with artificial intelligence at the university where I teach writing as a part-time adjunct. I had low hopes for the workshop, but I was also desperate. My students keep turning in essays that were obviously generated by AI, and I need to figure out what to do.

Education, Artificial Intelligence, Writing

114 points by blueridge 1 day ago | 153 comments

Will Writing Survive A.I.? This Media Company Is Betting on It (nytimes.com)
Dan Shipper, the founder of the media start-up Every, says he gets asked a lot whether he thinks robots will replace writers. He swears they won’t, at least not at his company.

Artificial Intelligence, Media, Writing

6 points by rmason 2 days ago | 0 comments

How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method (advancedfictionwriting.com)
Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That’s just life. If it were easy, we’d all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction.

Writing, Novel Writing, Storytelling, Creative Writing, Fiction

5 points by Tomte 2 days ago | 1 comments

How to Grow as a Technical Writer (passo.uno)
We all want to do a good job. Some of us also want to get better at our craft for a number of reasons, either practical or slightly delusional. Those include getting a raise, strengthening our résume, or simply ending the day with a fragile feeling of satisfaction after surviving failure for the nth time. They’re all good goals, though the ways of achieving them are not always straightforward.

Technical Writing, Career Development, Writing, Self-Improvement

11 points by theletterf 5 days ago | 1 comments

Methodical Banality (aeon.co)
The Renaissance scholar and educator Erasmus of Rotterdam opens his polemical treatise The Ciceronian (1528) by describing the utterly dysfunctional writing process of a character named Nosoponus.

Writing, Philosophy, History, Renaissance

42 points by CharlesW 7 days ago | 12 comments

Writing that changed how I think about programming languages (bernsteinbear.com)
Every so often I come across a paper, blog post, or (occasionally) video that completely changes how I think about a topic in programming languages and compilers. For some of these posts, I can’t even remember how I thought about the idea before reading it—it was that impactful.

Programming Languages, Compilers, Software Development, Writing

462 points by r4um 9 days ago | 60 comments

Writing that changed how I think about PL (bernsteinbear.com)
Every so often I come across a paper, blog post, or (occasionally) video that completely changes how I think about a topic in programming languages and compilers.

Programming Languages, Compilers, Software Development, Writing

8 points by surprisetalk 10 days ago | 0 comments

One hundred and one rules of effective living (mitchhorowitz.substack.com)
In more than thirty years as a writer, editor, and publisher, I have, to my best reckoning, introduced, abridged, issued or reissued, and read nearly every major work of inspirational literature produced or translated into English.

Writing, Self-Improvement, Literature, Philosophy

120 points by mathgenius 10 days ago | 109 comments

How to title your blog post or whatever (dynomight.net)
So you’ve made a thing. I’ll pretend it’s a blog post, though it doesn’t really matter. If people read your thing, some would like it, and some wouldn’t.

Content Creation, Blogging, Writing

96 points by cantaloupe 11 days ago | 33 comments

Alephic Writing Style Guide (alephic.com)
At Alephic, writing is our primary tool for clarity and persuasion.

Content Creation, Writing

52 points by otoolep 14 days ago | 46 comments

Reasons to Write More in an Age When Writing Means Less (miloandthecalf.substack.com)
The LLMs are here and they’ve already taken over large parts of the internet and of professional writing.

Writing, AI, Technology, Content Creation

4 points by paulpauper 15 days ago | 3 comments

Some novelists are becoming video game writers and vice-versa (theguardian.com)
While the novel remains a high-status cultural form, video game writing is still seen as a throwaway art – despite some of the biggest names in fiction being involved

Video Games, Novels, Writing, Culture

60 points by ilamont 16 days ago | 74 comments

Request for more articles on prompting techniques (simonwillison.net)
I'm disappointed at how little good writing there is out there about effective prompting.

Prompt Engineering, AI, Writing, Generative AI

10 points by quinncom 18 days ago | 2 comments

I'd rather read the prompt (claytonwramsey.com)
I write this article as a plea to everyone: not just my students, but the blog posters and Reddit commenters and weak-accept paper authors and Reviewer 2. Don’t let a computer write for you! I say this not for reasons of intellectual honesty, or for the spirit of fairness. I say this because I believe that your original thoughts are far more interesting, meaningful, and valuable than whatever a large language model can transform them into.

Writing, AI, Education, Creativity

1444 points by claytonwramsey 19 days ago | 840 comments

Signs You Used ChatGPT to Write That (seanjkernan.substack.com)
As a full-time writer and editor, friends and family often ask me to look over things they wrote.

ChatGPT, Writing, Editing, AI, Content Creation

10 points by klelatti 19 days ago | 3 comments

Ghosts and Dolls (thelampmagazine.com)
Sometimes, for some people, a piece of writing’s attribution alone suffices to taint or burnish it.

Literature, Art, Writing, Attribution

15 points by lermontov 21 days ago | 7 comments

Urtext: The Python plaintext library for people who've tried everything else (urtext.co)
Urtext /ˈʊrtekst/ is an open-source library for plaintext writing, research, documentation, knowledge bases, journaling, Zettelkasten, project/personal organization, note taking, a lightweight database substitute, or any other writing or information management that can be done in text format.

Python, Text Processing, Open Source, Knowledge Management, Writing

101 points by nbeversluis 22 days ago | 71 comments

AI suggestions make writing more generic, Western (news.cornell.edu)
Artificial intelligence-based writing assistants are popping up everywhere – from phones to email apps to social media platforms.

Artificial Intelligence, Writing, Generative AI, Language Models, Cultural Bias

55 points by gnabgib 23 days ago | 71 comments

AI is right about em-dashes (joeldueck.com)
There’s a notion going around that em-dashes signify AI authorship.

Artificial Intelligence, Writing, Grammar

12 points by freediver 25 days ago | 7 comments

The American Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation Makes No Sense (2021) (erichgrunewald.com)
There are different ways of combining quotation and punctuation marks. In the American style, you almost always put periods and commas inside the quotation marks:

Grammar, Punctuation, Writing, Style, Linguistics

14 points by colinprince 26 days ago | 0 comments

50 Things I've Learned Writing Construction Physics (construction-physics.com)
I’ve been writing Construction Physics since September of 2020. Over the past four and a half years I’ve written 186 essays, totalling around 600,000 words. The newsletter was originally focused on understanding the problems of construction productivity (though it’s never been entirely about that), but I have branched out to write more about a variety of topics, including energy, transportation, and scientific and technological progress.

Construction, Productivity, Writing, Newsletter, Technology

10 points by bookofjoe 34 days ago | 0 comments

Comments on "The average college student today" (hilariusbookbinder.substack.com)
Wow did people have a lot to say about that post. Well over 300,000 people read it and nearly 1100 restacked it, thus making it more widely read than probably all of my professional writings combined. I am surprised and grateful for the engagement. It’s been very interesting to me to see what resonated and what others have experienced.

Education, Social Media, Writing

11 points by pcfwik 36 days ago | 1 comments

I got rid of SMS loan spammers. (or "how I accidentally wrote sci-fi copypasta" (medium.com)
I just wanted to have a little fun writing a reply, but when I read it I realized I had made my own sort of rickroll (sally roll?) copypasta and I was going to send it to every sms loan spammer that pinged my phone.

Spam, Humor, Writing, Copypasta

19 points by ycombiredd 36 days ago | 9 comments

Functional Programming Lessons Conclusion (jerf.org)
As many others observe as well, one of the major reasons to write is to firm up ideas in one’s own head. Serializing an idea out into English words is still no guarantee one understands it deeply, but it is great progress over a very fuzzy idea that has never been fleshed out at all.

Programming, Functional Programming, Writing

52 points by speckx 39 days ago | 47 comments

Audiobooks vs. Printed Books: a debate as a reader and an author (newsandreviews.substack.com)
On Monday morning this week I started a dot point list of notes I wanted to hit in this week’s bad review, then I looked up and it was lunchtime and I was 1200 words into something much, much bigger.

Audiobooks, Reading, Writing, Publishing

32 points by zeristor 40 days ago | 68 comments

"The Phantom Tollbooth" Was Supposed to Be a Nonfiction Book About Cities (arbesman.substack.com)
The Phantom Tollbooth was initially supposed to be a children’s book about cities.

Children's Literature, Writing, Urban Planning

12 points by arbesman 45 days ago | 1 comments

Longtime Writing Community NaNoWriMo Shuts Down After AI Drama (gizmodo.com)
National Novel Writing Month is no more (at least formally).

Writing, AI, Community, Controversies, Shutdown

19 points by gnabgib 47 days ago | 3 comments

Writing apps I used to start and finish my book (theverge.com)
Can you ever use too much software? Yes, but hear me out first.

Writing, Books, Software, Productivity

9 points by Tomte 48 days ago | 1 comments

Ask HN: How to write better tech blogs (ycombinator.com)
I have a blog but it seems most people who are with my content hardly like it.

Writing, Blogging, Technology, Content Marketing

13 points by sonderotis 50 days ago | 6 comments

The NaNoWriMo organization is shutting down (theverge.com)
NaNoWriMo will no longer offer its annual challenge ‘after years of financial struggle.’

Nonprofit Organizations, Writing, NaNoWriMo

7 points by Tomte 50 days ago | 0 comments