Comment by woadwarrior01
8 hours ago
I'm not defending claudeslop, but TBF, anaphora and its lesser-known sibling: epistrophe far predate the English language, let alone something new like LLMs.
8 hours ago
I'm not defending claudeslop, but TBF, anaphora and its lesser-known sibling: epistrophe far predate the English language, let alone something new like LLMs.
The issue is the frequently repeated, formulaic use.
"I'm not defending claudeslop, but <defends slop>". People obviously know this. The problem is that using a dramatic rhetorical flourish every third sentence for completely un-dramatic things is fucking tiring. And so are the people defending this shit. "Oh, humans use em-dashes too, so actually there's literally no difference between a human using one or two and Claude using 400 em-dashes in one article". A human using things correctly and a language model using them incorrectly are not the same fucking thing.
Repetition at the start or end (i.e. Anaphora/Epistrophe) are not used lightly in prose or verse, they serve a rhetorical purpose - usually add rhythm or strengthen the theme.
The type of repetition Claude uses is what Fowler[1] called "elegant variations" and discouraged in modern style guides for a good reason - people find it really annoying.
[1] Henry not Martin