LLM language telltales

Have you noticed how LLMs (or maybe just Claude? IDK) love certain language constructions that humans rarely ever use?

• reach, reach for, reach into
  • “This second option is the one I’d actually reach for”
  • “most users should probably reach for --python mode first”
  • “The only route is reaching into canvas._scene_canvas.scene” (source)
• Happy to
  • “Happy to test more ideas manually and report back”
  • “Happy to actually measure the crossover”
  • “Happy to prototype whichever direction maintainers prefer.” (source)
• silently
  • “Inspecting only the directly declared dependencies would silently miss that and select too low a JDK”
  • “we’d silently build against stale source”
  • “matching_closure still reports a hit and skips the rebuild — a never-tested version silently treated as passing”
• quietly
  • “He carries it quietly, the way he carries most things.”
  • “the data model quietly forbids the good version of it”
  • “the deep, structural contentment of someone whose capacity for doubt had been quietly erased”
  • “rm as a top-level verb quietly re-frames cjdk as a JDK manager rather than a cache”
• shape
  • “Good — I have the shape of the API now.”
  • “Yes, teach the Updater coordinates — here’s the shape”
  • “jgo v2 changes my calculus significantly — and one thing I found in it changes the shape of the answer”
  • “knowing the shape of something was the first step toward addressing it”
  • “knowing it changed the shape of his motivation in a way he could not entirely articulate”
  • “the only upstream-shaped alternative is yet another bespoke overlay class” (source)
  • “Proposed API (sketch — for maintainers to shape)” (source)
• surface as a verb
  • “Real differences the tool surfaced”
  • “reinstating it on this branch surfaced the flake”
  • “But it surfaced a different, related collision”
  • “Reviewing Jython’s engine surfaced a real SPI gap”
  • “Getting there surfaced one genuine design refinement”
  • “melt can stay as-is for now since its log isn’t currently surfaced anywhere”
  • “Alternatively, this could be surfaced as a documented, opt-in config”

All of the above are real examples I’ve seen either posted online somewhere or in my own interactions with Claude.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein