[ksaun]

While I, too, find myself recoiling at many of Claude's word and phrase choices, I've chosen to grit my teeth and have just tried adapting to it. I want Claude to remain focused on the work I give it; I fear that influencing its communication with me would consume valuable context and give me lower quality results.

[Edit: Part of what led me to this conclusion: I do prohibit Claude from using em-dashes in any player-facing text and I've been surprised at how often I see it mention "no em-dashes" in its self-talk while it works. This led me to wonder how much each preference might dilute its attention.]

[Edit 2: I haven't experimented with hooks before and maybe the technique discussed in this article does not have the tradeoff I'm concerned about?]

[tensegrist]

things like that indeed tend to be fraught

some relevant links

https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02442 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15061 https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13006

[Fabricio20]

I also have a local rule for no em-dashes since it got way too annoying and i have the same concern that it dilutes the attention so it's the only rule i've kept in addition to "be concise".