I have literally never seen LLM writing that actually improved my life.

The model produces better work. Some of my peers believe that large language models produce strictly better writing than they could produce on their own. Anecdotally, this phenomenon seems more common among English-as-a-second-language speakers. I also see it a lot with first-time programmers, for whom programming is a set of mysterious incantations to be memorized and recited. I think this is also the cause of language model use in some forms of academic writing: it differs from the prior case with paper reviews in that, presumably, the authors believe that their paper matters, but don’t believe they can produce sufficient writing

As you may have seen, the US Senate agreed by unanimous consent on Tuesday to abolish standard time and keep clocks on daylight saving time all year. As you may know, I fucking hate this idea, and I kind of hate having to write about it again, because I have said my piece about the matter, repeatedly. But apparently a lot of you did not listen, so I’m going to have to explain again why the status quo on time is good and the ideas to change it are bad, in hopes that will stop the House from approving the Senate-passed bill and sending this nonsense to President Biden’s desk.

Some sentences just sound awkward. In order to ensure clarity, writers need to consider more than just grammar: weight is equally important. In the following extract from Making Sense, acclaimed linguist David Crystal shows how sentence length (and weight) affects writing quality.

In speech, if a subject goes on for too long, listener frustration starts to build up, as it’s difficult to retain all the information without knowing what’s going to be done with it:

My supporters in the party, who have been behind me from the very outset of this campaign, and who know very well that the country is also behind me …

We urgently need a verb! It’s a problem that can present itself in writing too, as when we read a slowly scrolling news headline on our television screen that begins like this:

In this video, I break down the basics of online writing. It’s the most distilled version of everything I teach in Write of Passage.

You can find notes from the workshop here: https://www.notion.so/bronsonchang/David-Perell-How-to-Write-Online-Workshop-2021-02-10-6cfaff84afd84b6592db2eb4461b3e40

I talk about:
How to improve your ideas through note-taking
How to write so people will want to read your work
How to build an audience of like-minded people

But it wasn’t just overegged fear of Mr. Putin’s nukes. The Biden and Trump administrations recognize the many ways Mr. Putin can make their lives difficult: cyberattacks, assassinations, sabotage, threats to undersea cables and now satellites. Russia can peddle ICBM technology to North Korea, submarine technology to China, antiship missiles to Iran, etc.

Willing the ends without willing the means is the happy prerogative of the pundit through the ages.

But no principle is advanced by making the perfect the enemy of the good. The reality principle defines every armistice ever concluded, including the many ugly ones you’re already thinking of.

Mr. Trump has a reputation for bold moves only in a relative sense: Politics makes all politicians risk-averse. They prefer small, reversible steps. They kick the can down the road whenever possible.

The 70% rule: If you’re roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing you’ve produced, you should publish it. If you’re 70% satisfied with a product you’ve created, launch it. If you’re 70% sure a decision is the right one, implement it. And if you’re 70% confident you’ve got what it takes to do something that might make a positive difference to the increasingly alarming era we seem to inhabit? Go ahead and do that thing. (Please!)

70% is actually better than 100%

Moving forward at 70% takes more guts, more strength of character, than holding out for 100%, because it entails moving forward amid uncertainty, anxiety, and the disagreeable feeling that comes with putting less-than-perfect work into the world.

When giving feedback on presentations most of us are unsure what to say and how to say it without upsetting anyone. That is why I designed a set of cards that you can hand out to your audience before…

1. Messaging: the message of the talk and the call to action.

2. Clarity: how easy the talk was to understand and follow.

3. Credibility: whether the facts and arguments presented were believable.

4. Engagement: which parts were more engaging, and which less.

5. Voice: pitch, quality, tempo and pauses.

6. Language: the type of language used and variety in expression.

7. Physicality: the speaker’s body language, gestures and movements.

8. Visuals: the quality and effectiveness of any visual aids used.

9. Connection: the speakers rapport and connection with the audience.

Shifts in the book industry have been a boon to writers who work quietly behind the scenes

About a year ago at Wix, we abruptly realized that, too often, we were not giving users the answers to these questions. When we got this wake-up call, we felt compelled to act swiftly, and not just to address the one error message that woke us up.

This is an example of a bad error message. It uses an inappropriate tone, passes the blame, speaks in technical jargon and is too generic.

https://medium.com/deliveroo-design/how-to-write-any-error-message-7a3348cce594

3. I need you to play on your own for some time.
4. Let's compromise.
5. I need you to do this first. Then, we can do X.
6. While I trust your judgment, I still need you to follow some rules. We can discuss them together.
7. I cannot agree to this. You have to meet me halfway on this issue.
8. I need some more time to process this. Let’s revisit this later after I have had a chance to think about it.
9. We know you mean well, but we are different. Can you respect the difference?
10. This is what I need.
11. I respect what you want, and I understand it. Unfortunately, I am not comfortable yet saying yes.
12. I need you to help me.
13. I understand you are doing something, but I need you to X.
14. I understand you need my help, but I cannot work on this right now.

You can make an envelope out of pretty much any flat, paper-like material! All you have to do is make a template, trace around it, cut, and glue.

Ensure Your Interface Copy Is Role-Playable (My Account)

Be Especially Transparent And Clear When It Comes To Sensitive Topics

• The button label should reflect the specific action that occurs when the user clicks or taps it.
• Titles stick better in their memory, so they must be understandable as a standalone text.

Express Action With Verbs, Not Nouns

Handmade zines, templates, tutorials, and how-to videos.

John McPhee -- almost peerless as a prose stylist -- wrote an essay for the New Yorker about his process called "Draft #4." For him, #4 is the draft after the painstaking labor of creation is done, when all that's left is to punch up the language, to replace shopworn words and phrases with stuff that sings.

The way you do it, is "you draw a box not only around any word that does not seem quite right but also around words that fulfill their assignment but seem to present an opportunity." You go looking for le mot juste.

But somehow for McPhee, the dictionary -- the dictionary! -- was the fount of fine prose, the first place he'd go to filch a phrase, to steal fire from the gods.

Take a simple word, like "flash." In all the dictionaries I've ever known, I would have never looked up that word. I'd've had no reason to -- I already knew what it meant. But go look up "flash" in Webster's (the edition I'm using is the 1913).

https://web.archive.org/web/20160108161120/http://machaut.uchicago.edu:80/websters

Countless chopstick wrappers advice learners to "hold chopsticks like a pen". Here we explore the correlation between pen grips and chopstick grips.

The book showed two closely-related variants of the tripod grip. For reasons that will be explained later, we will call the above left posture the Caswellian Grip, and the above right posture the Spencerian Grip.

• We will call it the Lateral Grip here. *

You have to be willing to step into the unknown if you want to be creative.

The will to do things that haven’t been done before.

When we’re creating things that have not been done before, uncertainty is inevitable.

The willingness to stay in the question long enough for the dots to connect.

My inability to make decisions is frustrating, but it also allows me to stay in the question longer. I’m not rushing to find a quick fix but rather twisting and turning problems. I often find the need to go back and research some more. To make sure that the path I’ve decided to take is the right one. It wasn’t until I got more comfortable in my role as a designer (I wish I could say that my imposter syndrome went away, but it still surfaces in every project) that I discovered the benefit of this. When it comes to solving problems with creative solutions, we must first spend time figuring out the right problem to solve. Then make sure that the solution we propose is helping more than hurting.

It’s never too late to control your own fate

In my way of thinking, radical agency involves finding real edges: things you are willing to do that others aren’t, often because they’re annoying, unpleasant, or obscured in a cloud of aversion.

The idea of finding real edges, rather than eking out wins by grinding harder than everyone else, clicked for me when I started playing poker. Pros spent nearly as much time studying as they did playing, using solvers to seek out tiny mathematical advantages. I noticed a massive edge that was almost entirely ignored: physical reads, or tells.

Court rejection

Seek real (anonymous) feedback

Increase your surface area for luck

Assume everything is learnable

Learn to love the moat of low status

Don't work too hard!

A comprehensive set of useful and semi-universal UX copywriting and style guidelines and examples to reference while designing and building products and interfaces.

Time

When writing about a time of the day, use numerals and lowercase am or pm, with a space in between. Use 12- or 24-hour time according to the locale. When writing in 24-hour time, show a 0 before single-digit hours.

Garden is the design system by Zendesk. It’s where we grow the components, standards, and tools that product designers use every day.