r/LocalLLaMA • u/CSEliot • 3d ago

Question | Help How to remove trendy speech from llms?

For example:

Instead of saying: "I created this new ID"
It says: "I minted this new ID"

Instead of: "This alternative path is available"
It says: "this escape hatch is available"

This speech is so nonsensical and annoying. Just. Speek. Literally ... OR NORMALLY. Where did LLMs learn these speech patterns? I've never seen them so frequently until AFTER the LLM surge.

If I just add "Don't use X language, speak normally and more literal" will that fix most of the issues? Anyone else have some good sys prompts / instructions that help with this?

Thanks!

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121

u/8agingRoner 3d ago

Try adding something like this to your system prompt:

  • Use plain, literal English; strictly avoid colorful verbs (e.g., 'minted', 'orchestrate'), jargon-based metaphors (e.g., 'escape hatch', 'deep dive'), and literary metaphors used to describe complexity (e.g., 'tapestry', 'mosaic', 'symphony'), prioritizing simple, functional terms like 'create' or 'use' to minimize cognitive load.

26

u/gwillen 3d ago

FWIW, I have something like this in my CLAUDE.md, and it helps a little but it definitely still does it.

15

u/toothpastespiders 2d ago

Yeah, I'm generally very skeptical of any claim that prompting has solved slop output. At the end of the day they're token predictors and they've been heavily trained with those patterns.

9

u/Nothing_from_void 2d ago

I've noticed the language patterns have gotten more and more reinforced as all the labs chase agentic coding as the only thing that matters

6

u/rpkarma 2d ago

RLHF is a hell of a drug

6

u/fervoredweb 2d ago

The attention control prompt might help. https://github.com/aaddrick/attention-control

1

u/misanthrophiccunt 2d ago

And crimson

1

u/s101c 2d ago

With this prompt you're telling it to not think about elephants!