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Comment by iwontberude | Hacker News Reader

Did you purposely write this to sound like an LLM?

It's just good writing structure. I get the feeling many people hadn't been exposed to good structure before LLMs.

LLMs can definitely have a tone, but it is pretty annoying that every time someone cares to write well, they are getting accused of sounding like an LLM instead of the other way around. LLMs were trained to write well, on human writing, it's not surprising there is crossover.

There is such a thing as a distinct LLM writing style that is not just good structure. Anyone who's read more than five books can tell that.

And the comment itself seems completely LLM generated.

It's true that LLMs have a distinct style, but it does not preclude humans from writing in a similar style. That's where the LLMs got it from, people and training. There's certainly some emergent style that given enough text, you would likely never see from a human. But in a short comment like this, it's really not enough data to be making good judgements.

That's not just false. It's the antithesis of true.

It's not just using rhetorical patterns humans also use which are in some contexts considered good writing. Its overusing them like a high schooler learning the pattern for the first time — and massively overdoing the em dashes and mixing the metaphors

LOL :-))

Not so sure about that. There are many distinct LLM "smells" in that comment, like "A is true, but it hides something: unrelated to A" and "It's not (just) C, it's hyperbole D".

Sure, but you can read articles that predate LLMs which have the same so called tells.

> Sure, but you can read articles that predate LLMs which have the same so called tells.

Not with such a high frequency, though. We're looking at 1 tell per sentence!

I personally love that phrasing even if it's a clear tell. Comparisons work well for me to grasp an idea. I also love bullet points.

So yeah, I guess I like LLM writing.

You're absolutely right, that isn't just good writing — that's poetry! Do you need further assistance?

Contrastive parallelism is an effective rhetorical device if the goal is to persuade or engage. It's not good if your goal is more honest, like pedagogy, curious exploration, discovery. It flattens and shoves things into categorical labels, leading the discussion more towards definitions of words and other sidetracks.

If it indicates, culturally in the current zeitgeist, that an AI wrote it, it becomes a bad structure.

I'd prefer we look to other trust metrics, rather than change for the sake of other's interpretation of who we are.

Other metrics:

Comment 1: 2026-02-18T23:45:12 1771458312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067991

Comment 2: 2026-02-18T23:45:32 1771458332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067994

20 seconds between comments.

or:

Comment 1: 2026-02-18T20:06:49 1771445209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065649

Comment 2: 2026-02-18T20:07:12 1771445232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065653

23 seconds between comments.

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It's a bot.

It's really not "good" for many people. It's the sort of high-persuasion marketing speak that used to be limited to the blogs of glossy but shallow startups. Now it's been sucked up by LLMs and it's everywhere.

If you want good writing, go and read a New Yorker.

I was specifically talking about structure, less content, because yes an LLMs content is usually the airy corporate cleansed speaking I can't stand.

I don't see that in the comment we are talking about mind you.

They trained the LLMs on people who think in LinkedIn posts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com