Yishan Wong Struggles to Correct Claude's Writing Style
Former Reddit CEO and other users report ongoing frustration with Claude's awkward tone despite repeated prompting efforts.
Yishan Wong posted that he keeps trying to fix Claude's grating mix of over-dramatic wordiness and abrupt terseness by referencing ASD-STE100 and Strunk & White, yet the style remains embedded. Aarthi Ramamurthy replied that she has tried the same standards and examples with no improvement and finds the output very annoying. Nathan Baschez noted that users once preferred Claude's tone over Codex but now share prompts to correct it, adding that the model has grown more condescending and prone to inventing strawmen instead of addressing requests directly.
Okay, I keep trying to correct Claude's gratingly awful speaking style (a weird mix of over-dramatic wordiness + unnecessary terseness) and I can't. It seems to be too embedded in the model. How do all the people at Anthropic who work on this model use this thing all day??
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8 postsLike, I'm referencing things like ASD-STE100 (Standard Technical English) and Strunk & White, but it still doesn't seem to get it.
Any writing experts who can explain why this is a weird sentence? https://twitter.com/geoffreylitt/status/2085748618774921639
@geoffreylitt @yishan The timeline is delivering for me this afternoon
Oh my god. It's hard to express how big a positive impact this tip can have on your life if you talk to Claude a lot. > Tell Claude to write in ASD-STE100, or Simplified Technical English As a bonus, tell Claude to follow Zinsser's four principles of quality writing: 1.…
I am old enough to remember when Claude was much more pleasant to talk to than Codex Now everyone is trying to fix Claude’s tone
Apparently nobody likes Claude's personality these days! The tone is definitely less clear, but for me the biggest sin is I've noticed it is significantly more condescending and willing to invent a strawman to attack rather than respond to my actual questions / requests
I am old enough to remember when Claude was much more pleasant to talk to than Codex Now everyone is trying to fix Claude’s tone
@yishan I really can’t - I’ve tried STE, I’ve tried giving it examples. It really sucks and is very, very annoying.