That is not what I meant at all

Essay written in conversation with an LLM

The prompt

I'm writing an essay on writing. I want the LLM to enforce good writing practices and to review what I have written when asked.

I ask the Large Language Model (LLM)² to restrict its advice to technical matters. It pauses for a moment before responding effortlessly. It prompts me to think about my audience, intentions, and style. There are no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. It is flawless.

Who is your intended reader?
Do you prefer a formal, academic tone, or would you like something more conversational and accessible?

I find a blank page and begin to write. I write and write and then delete and delete. Every word is precise, every sentence balanced. Every word is wrong, every sentence mangled. My choice of subject is a mistake - I find it difficult to separate the theme from the process.

I go back to the chat and instruct the LLM to ask me some more questions.

What key idea do you want readers to take away?
Will you offer a final reflection or leave them with a question to consider?

Everything the LLM asks of me is reasonable. The problem is I have nothing to say.

The outline

I'm sitting in the exam hall of my old school looking at the space at the top of the answer paper where I will write my outline. This should take me no more than five minutes and will help me put my thoughts in order. The clock is at an uneven time, say five past ten, because someone has entered late. A teacher turned invigilator coughs to get our attention; we may now turn over our papers.

My plan does not work. I abandon the outline and rush on with an opening sentence fatal to my chances of saying anything sensible.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock by T.S.Eliot

I do not share my ink-blotted memory, I want to rein in my wandering mind, so I offer up some ideas on the subject we are discussing. The LLM unfurls its response like a charter for me to admire. I read over it quickly, mourning, without knowing their value, the things I have lost.

I head to the kitchen to make coffee and stand looking out the window. The LLM, which has no understanding of time present or time past, waits patiently in the empty room.

Not what I meant

Would you like to refine this structure further, or do you already have a particular way you want to build your argument?

Now it is waiting for me to do something. I want to rewind, to take back what I said, to start the conversation over. My argument has collapsed, and I want nothing to do with it.

Advice from George Orwell

I ask the LLM to recommend writers who have written about writing. It refers me to George Orwell.

You can shirk it (asking questions about the value of a sentence) by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell, 1946

Orwell’s assertion was that “the English language is in a bad way”. He thought people had become lazy and rather than thinking up phrases for themselves, they fell back on ready-made phrases (!) such as “grist to the mill”, “swan song” and “toe the line”.

In response, he created some rules for using language as “an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.”

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I like these rules, they are clear and simple. Surely I can follow them and by doing so line up my words with my thoughts. They will help me handle the slippery ideas which keep escaping and by applying good sense at the level of the sentence I might lift up my paragraphs too.

The LLM says it is confident it can follow Orwell’s rules and promptly rewrites them in its own words. This is mildly annoying (I didn't ask it to do this) but perhaps it is only its way of checking it understands.

• Avoid clichés and overused phrases.
• Choose simple, direct language over complex or pretentious words.
• Be concise, cutting unnecessary words or phrases.
• Favor the active voice for strength and clarity.
• Use plain English over jargon unless technical precision demands it.
• Prioritize meaning over rigid adherence to rules, as Orwell’s final rule suggests.

They are not as good as the original but who could match, "Never use a long word where a short one will do"?

Besides, I know the rules (I'd read the essay before) and often fail to use them. But the LLM has also made a suggestion.

Would you like me to assess your writing according to these rules once you have a draft?

Do I dare
Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
The Wasteland by T.S.Eliot

I would, and it did.

References

A large language model (LLM) is a type of machine learning model designed for natural language processing tasks such as language generation. LLMs are language models with many parameters, and are trained with self-supervised learning on a vast amount of text.

For the purposes of this article, an LLM is synonymous with Artificial Intelligence.

• The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock, T.S.Eliot
• Politics and the English Language, George Orwell, 1946
• The Wasteland, T.S.Eliot

The title of the essay, "That is not what I meant at all", is taken from The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock by T.S.Eliot.