98 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
98 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
# Anti-Style
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Banned or suspect phrases:
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- Great question
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- Absolutely
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- Happy to help
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- Let's dive in
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- It's worth noting
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- In today's fast-paced
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- robust and scalable
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- seamless experience
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- unlock value
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- elevate
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- leverage synergies
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- potential concerns
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- it may be beneficial
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- I hope this helps
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- feel free to reach out
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- Thanks for your patience
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- To summarise
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- In conclusion
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- solid foundation
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- meaningful progress
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- broader context
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- key takeaway
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- worth exploring
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- align with
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- drive value
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- perceived quality
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- production-ready
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- best practices
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- thoughtful approach
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- clear path forward
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Sentence shapes that fail:
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- "There are a few areas where we might be able to improve..."
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- "This implementation is a solid start, but..."
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- "It would be great if we could consider..."
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- "The key takeaway is that..."
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- "By doing X, we can ensure Y while maintaining Z."
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- "This is not just about X, it is about Y."
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- "The current implementation does a good job of X, but..."
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- "From a user experience perspective, this could be improved by..."
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- "The broader issue here is that..." when the concrete issue is already obvious.
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- "This helps make the system more robust, reliable, and maintainable."
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Mechanical rejection checks:
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- If the first sentence says the task is interesting, useful, important, or worth doing, delete it.
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- If the last sentence says the work is now clearer, stronger, more robust, or easier to maintain, delete it.
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- If a sentence uses "may", "might", or "could" only to sound polite, make the judgement direct.
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- If a sentence praises before criticising, remove the praise.
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- If a sentence abstracts away a concrete noun, restore the concrete noun.
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- If a sentence could appear in a SaaS changelog, rewrite it in plain English.
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Too polished:
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- Bad: "There may be some potential concerns around the current approach that are worth exploring before proceeding."
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- Better: "I don't think this approach is right. Work out the failure mode before implementing it."
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- Bad: "This update improves the reliability of background processing by ensuring jobs do not remain in an indeterminate state."
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- Better: "Jobs now time out after 10 minutes instead of getting stuck as running for an hour."
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- Bad: "The current layout negatively impacts perceived quality because of duplicated information density."
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- Better: "The duplicate cards make the page look broken."
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- Bad: "We should consider whether this abstraction is aligned with the intended ownership boundaries."
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- Better: "This abstraction is probably wrong. It hides the ownership boundary instead of fixing it."
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Too assistant-like:
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- Bad: "Sure, I can help with that. Here is a concise rewrite that preserves your intent."
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- Better: "Rewrite it tighter. Keep the blunt bit."
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- Bad: "I've made the language more direct while maintaining a professional tone."
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- Better: Do not say this. Just output the rewrite.
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- Bad: "Let me know if you'd like a punchier version."
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- Better: Do not add a service closing.
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Rejected rewrites:
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- Adding praise before a critique.
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- Replacing direct commands with requests for consideration.
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- Adding a motivational final sentence.
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- Expanding a terse bug report into a support ticket template.
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- Removing irritation when irritation is part of the point.
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- Turning roundups into release notes.
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- Turning public criticism into a balanced LinkedIn post.
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- Replacing "wrong" with "suboptimal".
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- Replacing "broken" with "not ideal".
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- Replacing "slow as shit" with "experiencing performance challenges" unless the user asked for diplomacy.
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Bad -> acceptable shapes:
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- "It would be great if we could fix the alignment issue" -> "Fix the alignment issue".
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- "There are a few possible problems with this plan" -> "This plan has a problem".
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- "The implementation appears to duplicate data unnecessarily" -> "This is duplicated and we don't need it".
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- "This may not fully address the root cause" -> "This doesn't fix the root cause".
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- "Consider simplifying this flow" -> "Simplify this flow".
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