On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 4:20 PM Ben Russell wrote: > > On 25/05/2026 10:30, Jim Hall via Freedos-devel wrote: > > Documentation: Not sure where to draw the line. > > > > But I know not everyone is comfortable with writing docs. You might not > > be good at grammar or spelling, or even the writing process itself. > > > > Some might prefer to use AI “assisted” tools like Grammarly that can > > rewrite sections of text to meet a target, or Scribe that can “watch” > > what you do and write a how-to for you. > > Based on your description, Scribe sounds like a good idea, but Grammarly > sounds like it's going to turn what you say into ChatGPTese. > > Having something do roughly the minimum required to fix up your grammar > and spelling does seem genuinely useful and a lot of people would > actually benefit from that. Anything beyond that is going to take > liberties and make you sound like a corporate drone. >
I teach tech writing (grad and undergrad) at a university, and a few students have used Grammarly. It probably improves their grammar -- but you're right, it also makes it pretty bland. You can tell that they've used an AI to improve their writing. My note about "Scribe" is probably not applicable, though. I don't use Scribe, but I understand that it uses a desktop client (or web browser extension) that will "watch" what you do and record it. But I doubt it's smart enough to understand a DOS session in a virtual machine. :-) > It does make me wonder how practical community help for that sort of > stuff currently is, though. Because that would *also* be a way to help > with spelling and grammar as long as "don't mock someone for having > broken English" is a rule, likely implicit but should probably be made > explicit. > > And as for the writing process, if you aren't good at writing fluff... > that might actually be a good thing? If you can't use big words, use > small words and keep it simple. > That's my preference too. I'd rather read human-written docs. If you aren't good at (or confident at) writing, then please use short, simple sentences to describe what to do. If your grammar and spelling isn't perfect, that's okay. _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
