I've been thinking about something that is becoming pretty common among developers.π€
A lot of us use AI to polish our English before publishing a post!!
And honestly,
English isn't everyone's first language. You might have a good idea, a useful experience, or a technical problem you solved, but explaining it clearly in English can take much more effort than solving the actual problem.
So you write your thoughts, give them to AI, fix the grammar, improve a few sentences, and publish.
Nothing wrong with that.
But there is one interesting problem.
Sometimes, after all that polishing, the content doesn't sound like us anymore.
It sounds like AI!
When "betterEnglish" changes the way we sound
Think about the way you normally explain something to a friend or a teammate.You probably use simple words. You might repeat a word. Your sentences may not always be perfect. You have your own way of explaining things.Now give the same text to an AI and ask it to make it "professional and engaging."
The result will probably be grammatically better.
But it may also replace your normal words with more sophisticated ones, change the way you explain things, and add those familiar AI-style transitions.
The article becomes cleaner.
But somehow, the person who wrote it becomes harder to see.
That's the part I find interesting.
We're using AI because we want to communicate our ideas better, but sometimes we end up communicating in a way that doesn't really sound like us.
And I don't think the solution is to stop using AI
For someone who isn't comfortable with English, AI can be genuinely useful.
If I know exactly what I want to say but don't know how to say it naturally in English, there's nothing wrong with getting help.
It's similar to using a grammar checker or a translation tool.
The important thing is what AI is helping with.
If the idea, experience, examples and opinions are mine, and AI is helping me express them more clearly, I still consider that my content.
But if I give AI a vague topic and ask it to create the entire experience, opinions and article for me, that's a different situation.
The difference isn't really about whether AI was used.
It's about what we asked AI to do.
Maybe we should stop asking AI to make our writing "professional"
This is probably where we can improve our own workflow.
Instead of saying:
Make this professional and engaging.
We could say something like:
Fix my grammar and make the sentences easier to understand. Keep my vocabulary simple and preserve my original tone. Don't add new ideas or make the writing sound overly formal.
That's a small change, but it makes a big difference.
We're no longer asking AI to replace our writing style.
We're asking it to help us communicate our writing style.
And I think that's a much better use of the tool.
Don't accept every correction blindly
There's another thing that helps.
After AI gives you the polished version, actually read it.
- If there's a sentence you would never say in real life, change it.
- If AI uses a word you don't normally use, replace it.
- If it changes the way you wanted to explain something, change it back.
The final version doesn't have to be the version AI gave you.
It's still your article.
Sometimes I even think a slightly imperfect sentence is better than a perfectly polished sentence that doesn't sound like the person who wrote it.
The strange part is that AI-written and AI-polished content can look very similar
This is where things get complicated.
A developer who genuinely wrote an article but used AI heavily for English correction can end up with writing that looks almost identical to an article generated mostly by AI.
As readers, we often can't tell the difference.
And honestly, I'm not sure AI detection is going to solve this problem.
AI is getting better at writing like humans, and humans are getting better at using AI to write.
So maybe the more useful question isn't:
"Was AI used to write this?"
Maybe it's:
"Is there a real person and a real experience behind this?"
If someone shares a bug they actually faced, a project they actually built, or a lesson they actually learned, the value is still thereβeven if AI helped them express it in better English.
We don't need perfect English. We need clear communication.
This is probably the main thing I want to say.
If English isn't your first language, don't let that stop you from sharing what you know.
Use AI if it helps.
Just don't let the process remove your personality from the content.
- Write your own thoughts first.
- Use AI to help with the language.
- Read the result yourself.
- Change whatever doesn't sound like you.
- And most importantly, make sure you actually understand and stand behind everything you publish.
Because the thing that makes a developer's post worth reading isn't perfect English.
It's the experience behind it.
AI can polish the words.
But the story should still be yours.
Top comments (4)
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Beautifully written, and I could not agree more.
One thing I would add, since you focused on the prompt. The prompt is the weakest place to carry your voice, because you have to describe your own style, and almost nobody can do that accurately. Showing beats telling. If your tool allows it, feed it a folder of things you have already written and let it work out the pattern itself. Some of them let you save that as a reusable style profile.
Then the correction loop matters more than the first output. When it hands you something that does not sound like you, do not just fix it and move on. Fix it, tell it why, and save that. Otherwise you correct the same thing every week.
The change that helped me most, though, is not asking for a polished version at all. Ask for three options and pick one. Choosing is where your voice actually lives, and it puts you back in the author's seat instead of the editor's.
And keep a running note. Jot the raw thought on the day you have it, in your own words, and develop it later. What you scribble at the time is the most sentence that sounds like you that you will ever have.
To be straight about it, I use AI too, as an assistant, and I am still learning to use it well. Some days are busy enough that automating the whole thing is tempting.
I was actually thinking of writing something on this myself. You got there first, and better.π
As a matter of fact there's a post still lingering i need to complete which my Assistant even council app has not been able to deliver. The soul of that topic i'd rather get or not make the post π
The AI assistance here ain't working as other stuff or projects on this particular topic.
Very interesting topic. The desire to remain authentic and share your own views remains a desire and must be supported. This is a trait one should support and encourage others. However over time we do make small adjustments as we want to be heard and understood, we want engagement and this can mean a lot of things as to why one desires that. This is often the case when someone is not proficient in English or the dominant language in the location they are in. There can be cultural aspects too. IMHO, AI does help here and AI does help tune the message to the right persona, right demographic while still remaining true to your own self and remaining authentic.