Hacker News Reader

Comment by pvtmert | Hacker News Reader

I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context. Not like I have a perfect writing anyway, but at least I could prove that it was self-written, not an auto-generated slop. (Could be self-written slop though :)

This applies not only work-stuff itself also to the job-applications/cv/resume and cover-letters.

View on HN

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (like (this)).

Yes I enjoy lisp, how could you tell

I tend to rephrase myself so I dont end a statement inside a parenthesis with a smiley.

It's one of those things I think are worth putting some extra effort into, I'm glad to see at least one other person giving it some thought. Thx <3

Your comment made me realise that there's logic to this (like this :), since in HTML we can:

    <li> do this
    <li> and this

instead of: <li> ... </li>

and <img alt='this'> instead of <img ... />

You might like Lisp, but what you're saying reminds me of the late 00s/early 2010s xHTML2 vs. HTML5 debate :)

I'm an avid defender of xHTML. You can pry it from my cold dead hands

Thanks, I hate it :)

You monster.

I have the same problem. I just ditch the smiley face. :)

never >:(

Are you quoting someone doing a sad face or are you angry? ;)

Post C++11 you can just do (like this:)), no extra space needed before the last parenthesis.

But then it looks like I'm using a double smiley[0] which I do actually use on occasion

[0] :))

You could use a bracket in the smiley (like this :]) as is sometimes used when nesting parentheticals.

I sometimes do the opposite and use brackets for the parentheticals [like this :)]

The answer is obviously to balance your smiley faces and wrap the entire statement in the smiley face sentiment. ((: Like this :))

I like this simply for the absurdity of it, but will only use it when the entire parenthetical is modified by the smiley instead of a single word or phrase (:since I really like it:) but (it looks ugly, no hard feelings :) )

That’s quite the Scheme…

Ah, Spanish notation.

You have to invert the front one! (⸵ Of course, only noticable if it's a winky ;)

Turned Semicolon (U+2E35 ⸵)

Use dashes and the problem goes away! Well, you gain the LLM witch-hunt, but heh, no free lunch.

The relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/541

allow me to introduce my friend – turned smiley here he is: ´◡` (quite useful for brackets ´◡`)

you can find him on windows by pressing Win + ; not as fast as typing, but quite faster then typing and then wondering if thats too much brackets or too little

I love kaomoji so I use this on occasion but nothing can match the subtle passive aggressiveness and level of expression unmatched by anything else :)

You're really on to something there (-:

I’ve always been bothered by instances of your first example, and I mostly use “XD” instead of “:)” to sidestep the issue in my own writing.

Synthetic example:

"Вот его, нет, не допустили (сама знаешь, почему)))"

My translation:

"But him - no, they didn't let him in (of course you know why :)"

When I went from texting friends in Russian or Ukrainian back to English, I missed right parentheses as a smiley; one or two - hi), hello)) - to me are like a smile, by ))) and )))) there's some laughing or some other joke going on. Native speakers could weigh in; my native tongue is English.

This only works as "proof" up until someone innovates an "authenticity" flag on the LLM output.

https://github.com/ethel-dev/misspell

tbh u can basically do this now lol... no flag needed.

if u want it to sound more real u just gotta tell the bot to write that way. like literally just ask it to throw in some typos or forget to capitalize stuff. or use slang and kinda ramble instead of being all robotic and organized.

I'm trademarking the improper use of it/it's, there/their/they're, were/we're, etc as a sign of my humanity. Apple's typocorrect is doing it for me anyways.

> I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context.

I've also noticed an increase of this in myself and others, I used to edit a lot more before sending anything, but now it seems more authentic if you just hit send so it's more off the cuff with typos, broken sentences and all.

I'm sure an LLM could easily mimic this but it's not their default.

I’ve been doing the same thing. Basically a Turing test.

I appreciate you including a few minor mistakes in this very post:

> I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context[s]. Not like I have ~a~ perfect writing anyway, but at least I could prove that it was self-written, not an auto-generated slop. (Could be self-written slop though :)

> This applies not only [to] work-stuff itself also to the job-applications/cv/resume and cover-letters.

I conclude you are real.

To me the OP read like a particular dialect of English which is quite common on HN, rather than being incorrect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com