[hammock]

The "analyze" feature works pretty well.

My comments underindex on "this" - because I have drilled into my communication style never to use pronouns without clear one-word antecedents, meaning I use "this" less frequently that I would otherwise.

They also underindex on "should" - a word I have drilled OUT of my communication style, since it is judgy and triggers a defensive reaction in others when used. (If required, I prefer "ought to")

My comments also underindex on personal pronouns (I, my). Again, my thought on good, interesting writing is that these are to be avoided.

In case anyone cares.

[throwanem]

I would prefer the "analyze" feature focus on content rather than structure words. I forget the specific linguistic terms but to a first approximation, nouns and verbs would be of interest, prepositions and articles not. Let's call the former "syntactic" and the latter "semantic."

I suppose it's possible the "analyze"-reported proportions are a lot more precise and reliably diagnostic than I imagine. I haven't yet looked in detail at the statistical method.

Also, of course, it would require integration with NLP tooling such as WordNet (or whatever's SOTA there something like a decade and a half on) and a bit of Porter stemming to do part-of-speech tagging. If one 0.7GB dataset is heavyweight where this is running, that could be a nonstarter; stemming is trivial and I recall WordNet being acceptably fast if maybe memory hungry on a decade ago's kinda crappy laptop, but I could see it requiring some expensive materialization just to get datasets to inspect. (How exactly do we define "more common" for eg "smooth?" Versus semantic words, all words, both, or some combination? Do we need another dataset filtered to semantic words? Etc.)

If we're dreaming and I can also have a pony, then it would be neat to see both the current flavor, one focused on semantics as above, and one focused specifically on syntax as this one coincidentally often seems to act like. I would be tempted to offer an implementation, but I'm allergic to Python this decade.

[throwanem]

Of course, immediately after the edit window closes, I revisit this comment and discover that in the first paragraph I swapped my terms and made a hash of the rest of the thing. Please cut out and paste into your printouts the following corrected version. Thank you!

> I would prefer the "analyze" feature focus on content rather than structure words. I forget the specific linguistic terms but to a first approximation, nouns and verbs would be of interest, prepositions and articles not. Let's call the former "semantic" and the latter "syntactic."

[jcims]

I (also?) felt the 'words used less often' were much easier to connect to as a conscious effort. I pointed chatgpt to the article and pasted in my results and asked it what it could surmise about my writing style based on that. It probably connected about as well as the average horoscope but was still pretty interesting!

[antirez]

That's very interesting as I noticed that certain outliers seemed indeed conscious attempts.

[croemer]

Since you seem to care about your writing, I'm wondering why you used "that" here?

> I use "this" less frequently that I would otherwise

Isn't it "less than" as opposed to "less that"?

[hammock]

Typo. Good catch

[WhyNotHugo]

I think “should” and “ought to” end up being equivalent.

I prefer to avoid such absolutes and portray causality instead.

For example, in place of “you should not do drugs at work” I prefer “if you take drugs at work you’ll get in trouble”.

[hammock]

They do, and your suggestion is a great alternative. I'll try to do more of that

[6510]

I often times go back to replace the instances of "should" wiht "could" as I could not tell people what to do. “you could not do drugs at work”

[SoftTalker]

Nothing wrong with implying that people ought to behave according to mainstream social norms.

[brookst]

Isn’t that the same as saying that counterculture, fringe culture, and subcultures ought not exist?

[SoftTalker]

I wouldn't take it that far, individual rights are important but so is functioning society. Counterculture is often a cyclic/youthful reaction to things that have been established as "better" or "proper" by older generations. Most rules for life such as the 10 Commandments have sort of a "deny youself some pleasure because it's better for the group" vibe that have been learned and re-learned over many centuries.

[generalizations]

Interestingly, when most people simply choose to do what most people choose to do, you get an emergent 'herd mentality' which can lead to some very strange places. It is also sensitive to very small purturbations - which in real terms means, the one person who does manage to think for themselves may find they have an outsized effect on the direction of the crowd.

I think this mentality is also where the term 'sheeple' comes from.

[Joker_vD]

> I prefer "ought to"

I too like when others use it, since a very easy and pretty universal retort against "you ought to..." is "No, I don't owe you anything".

[albumen]

Are you saying there's a connection between "ought" and "owe"? All I see is "I don't want to hear any criticism".

[Joker_vD]

Yes, "ought" is the past tense of "owe". At some point, the second alternative spelling "owed" was introduced to better separate the two meanings (literal and figurative), but it's still the same word; a similar thing happened with "flower" and "flour", those used to be interchangeable spellings of the same word but then somebody decided that the two meanings of that word should be separated and given specific spellings.

And the construct "you owe it to <person> to <verb>" still exists even today but is not nearly as popular as "you should <verb>" precisely because it has to state to whom exactly your owe the duty; with "should" it sounds like an impersonal, quasi-objective statement of fact which suits the manipulative uses much better.

[chongli]

I have occasionally used the construct “you owe it to yourself to X”. I think it works well at conveying the sentiment that the person in question may be missing out on something if they don’t do X.

“You should” has a much more generic and less persuasive sentiment. “Why should I?” is a common and easy response which now leaves the suggester having to defend their suggestion to a skeptical audience.

[hammock]

Good point about "should" - it's also a word that has lost its original meaning. Shall, should, will and would used to have different, more nuanced meanings comprared to how we tend to use them today.

The only place today I see "shall" used correctly where most would say "should" or "will," is in legal documents and signage.

[oasisbob]

The etymology makes a connection through old English. Oxford dictionary also contains this meaning:

> used to indicate duty or correctness

A duty to others is something you owe them; think, a duty of care and its lack, which is negligence.

[throwaway290]

Now if you only underindex on "underindex"... There's a good alternative that everyone understands, "use less"

[hammock]

If we weren't on HN, I might be inclined to agree

[tobr]

> Again, my thought on good, interesting writing is that these are to be avoided.

You mean, ”I think this should be avoided”? ;)

[hammock]

Nice one high five

[milesrout]

Should is a commonly used word and a fine one. You should feel free to use it. If someone gets hot under the collar because you said he should do something then he is an idiot.

"Ought to" is essentially a synonym. Anyone that gets upset when you said they should do something but is fine when you say that they ought to do something is truly a moron.

[heresie-dabord]

    > If someone [test] then he is an idiot.
    > Anyone [test] when [test] is truly a moron.

These structures are worse habits in communication than subtle, colloquially interchangeable word choices.

[milesrout]

This isn't a habit of communication. I honestly mean it: if you get upset that someone said you "should" do something, but you are fine when they say you "ought to" do it, then you must be stupid. They mean the same thing in modern English.

[jjk7]

Yes but words hold memories to others. Since 'ought to' is less frequently used it doesn't 'trigger' people the same way.

Most people are emotion-first, how the words make them feel is more important than the definitions of them. Being emotion-first doesn't make them stupid.

[milesrout]

Being so emotional they react wildly to one of the most common words in the English language does in fact make them stupid.

[Loughla]

The only time to avoid command words like should is when the person could conceivably see them as a command. Because then you're being a dick.

Otherwise, if someone wants to take the time to dissect meaning from add-on meaningless words like should in a sentence, they should find something better to do with their time. Or just ask instead of being a moron.

[milesrout]

How are you being a dick?! There are loads of reasons why you may want or need to instruct someone to do something. I prefer the imperative mood. It is more direct. "Sudo make me a cup of tea".

[hammock]

Most people are more moronic than one might think