Our experience (https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16107) is that LLMs like GPT-4o have a particular writing style, including both vocabulary and distinct grammatical features, regardless of the type of text they're prompted with. The style is informationally dense, features longer words, and favors certain grammatical structures (like participles; GPT-4o loooooves participles).
With Llama we're able to compare base and instruction-tuned models, and it's the instruction-tuned models that show the biggest differences. Evidently the AI companies are (deliberately or not) introducing particular writing styles with their instruction-tuning process. I'd like to get access to more base models to compare and figure out why.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tkgally&next=3380763...
Examples within the last week include >>44996702 , >>44989129 , >>44991769 , >>44989444 . I typed all of those.
I never use space-hyphen-space instead of an em dash. I do sometimes use TeX's " --- ".
And in writing, I like using long dashes—but since they’ve become associated with ChatGPT’s style, I’ve been more hesitant to use them.
Now that a lot of these “LLM buzzwords” have become more common in everyday English, I feel more comfortable using them in conversation.
“Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?!” — Sofia Vergara (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t34JMTy0gxs)
It reflected local Los Angeles culture, but it wasn’t long before I was hearing the same type of speech, everywhere (I lived in Maryland, at the time).
That's from the last decade.
'Please revert' seems to be from the 00's, it's 'reply'. There are others I've tried to ignore and forget.
Language changes, and I'm a dinosaur unfortunately.
I also love the fact American English sometimes uses better, or more interesting words, than English. 'Median' (thanks World's Wildest Police Videos), or 'fall' for autumn.
I’m not the person you asked, but I do.
> the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it
The spaces around it depend on style guide, it is not universal that they should not exist.
> That's because most keyboards don't have an emdash key
Nor do they have keys for proper quotes and apostrophes or interrobangs, yet it doesn’t stop people from using them. The keys don’t need to exist.
> That's what makes it such a good giveaway.
It’s not. It might be one signal but it is far from sufficient.
> I'm happy to be told that I'm wrong, and that you do actually use the proper double long dash in your writing
I do use the proper em-dash in my writing—and many other characters too—and my HN history is ample proof. I explained at length in another comment how I insert the characters, plus how simple it is if you use any Apple OS.