I keep getting flagged for AI, but I suck at writing. How can I solve this?

qquesobob about 3 hours ago 6 comments

ES version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

So I write posts in my own language, but admittedly I suck at writing, and I kind of hate my writing voice in general. So then I go to Claude and I just ask it to clean it up. I'm not asking it to rewrite. I'm asking it to fix my spelling, add a comma, do the things that high school English should have taught me but spellcheck ruined me with. I also, more than anything, now use voice-to-text to shout out to Wispr Flow when writing. Sometimes that free thought makes it worse because now I just get to ramble and someone listens to me. All I'm trying to do is clean it up and make it easy to digest on the end, but I keep getting flagged for any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or just for rail on me for sucking. Also, I'm going to see what happens with this post because literally just talking into my computer and going to see if I'm flagged again. No AI was even considered in writing this.

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WCSTombs•about 3 hours ago

Good writing is rewriting. That said, in my experience the hardest part is writing the first draft, i.e., just getting something down at all. So do whatever you need to do to get your own thoughts on the page (except Claude, obviously), and then proofread, correct, and revise. If you do substantial revisions, then you'll have to do more editing passes. When you do a pass and only make minor changes, that's a sign that you're probably done.

If you think you're just a poor writer...well, you won't get better without doing it a lot, will you? Also consider that AI assistance will actively hamper your growth, and that's considered a feature, not a bug (would the AI labs prefer you to depend on their products, or to outgrow them?).

On spelling and grammar, you can't get flagged as AI for using spellcheck. I don't use grammar checking, but I read somewhere that grammar checking algorithms have gotten good now, so that could be something else to look into (as long as it just highlights potential problems and doesn't rewrite your words).

rjsw•about 3 hours ago

I think you will find that a technical audience is much more tolerant of imperfect English than you seem to expect.

quesobob•about 3 hours ago

Side note. yes, in the past, totally had AI write stuff. Because I'm lazy and it's easy, I've stopped.

magicalhippo•about 3 hours ago

When asking AI to improve the text, I ask it for feedback. It might come with suggestions for changed sentences, but I then try to capture the essence of the suggestion while rewriting the sentence myself. Perhaps what the AI wanted was to add a caveat, or use a more careful phrasing.

I then respond with my rewrite and ask for feedback again.

At least this lets me keep the writing mine, while avoiding blatant errors.

That said, I don't do this often, never when replying on forums like this, only when say writing documentation or similar. English is my second language but people will just have to deal with it for the most part.

Jblx2•about 3 hours ago

Ah, the royal road to learning how to write.

andsoitis•about 3 hours ago

What's the question?