[Feature Request] Reduce rhetorical flourishes and "not X but Y" constructions in scientific writing output
Status Open
Reported on v2.1.222
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 15, 2026
Bug Description
model defaults to 'not X but Y' constructions and emphasis inflation in scientific writing where it doesn't belong; had to strip ~12 instances from a scientific grant proposal. examples: "Not X but Y" constructions (the worst offender class):
- "Supervision is not a plan but a running fact" → gone (you'd already cut the front half; I removed the trailing "deepens rather than initiates" too — the sentence now just states the facts and stops)
- "The architecture is not asserted but compiled" → deleted the frame; the sentence now simply says what was derived and verified
- "not an assumption but a derived optimum" (10 GHz clock, §1.2) → "is a derived optimum"
- "Three foundations are built, not promised" → "Three components are already complete"
- "GRAIL does not build a component for that machine; it builds…" → "GRAIL builds and operates a unit cell of that machine"
- "a supply rather than a demonstration" → gone with its sentence
Meta-commentary on my own honesty (telling the reader how honest we're being):
- "the contribution is deliberately scoped and honest" → "narrowly scoped"
- "I am, by an honest accounting, most of the way there" → "Much of the required foundation is in place"
- "the methodology working exactly as this section claims" → "a first demonstration of the approach this section describes"
Clever-verb metaphors and aphorisms:
- "the same model that prices my claims postdicts the field's flagship result" → "the model used for my design predictions also reproduces the field's flagship measurement"
- "the same triangle, inverted, of a typical quantum-optics applicant" → deleted
- "its logic is the project's logic" → deleted
- "The deepest form of this contribution" → "The contribution is also architectural"
- The 1.4 closer's tricolon + "— and this is the moment —" → "Fifteen years of measurement, engineering, and modeling of physical systems have prepared me to build this machine."
Environment Info
- Platform: darwin
- Terminal: Apple_Terminal
- Version: 2.1.222
- Feedback ID: c775e548-ac0e-40ba-ae74-27e4b8146b12
Errors
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