Alephic Writing Style Guide
43 comments
·May 9, 2025skrebbel
BrenBarn
That's especially ludicrous considering the linked article, which is listing a bunch of style guidelines which would probably make an AI stand out like a sore thumb.
noahbrier
Alephic co-founder here. Basically we work with marketers on ai stuff.
Veen
That’s not bad writing; it's intentional ambiguity. Alephic wants potential clients to understand that they do "AI stuff," so when a company is looking for help with "AI stuff", they can say, "Yes! Of course we do that!" — regardless of the specifics. B2B services companies frame their offering ambiguously to cast the widest possible net. They'll write a custom pitch once they know what a lead actually needs.
samirillian
> Just as Borges' Aleph represents the convergence of all points in the universe, Alephic stands at the intersection of AI, code, and marketing expertise.
C’mon isn’t it obvious.
Fraterkes
"Just as Borges' Asterion represents a prisoner who imagines his prison a palace, our bussiness relies utterly on the llms of other private companies"
Corey_
It's easy to get caught up in using fancy words that sound impressive but don't actually explain anything. At the end of the day, it’s just a lot of buzzwords with no clear meaning.
lo_zamoyski
The impossible, obviously.
ozornin
Another writing style guide, barely distinguishable from many others, but written in tone like it's radically different. Maybe this is precisely the point, though.
Alex_001
AI excels at clarity and conciseness, especially in styles like Alephic’s, which values simplicity. It helps remove redundancy and sharpen content. But when it comes to deeper emotional or philosophical writing, can AI truly capture the "soul" of the message?
l5870uoo9y
Perhaps it should be clarified that this is a writing guide for marketing material and the formula is the same as always; concise sentences with a focus on action (readers almost always need to be pushed to click something, do something or buy something). If you write a blog, fiction or poetry, this writing guide will most likely crush any creativity, originality and desire to write.
If you want to learn how to write well, your best bet is to read different great writers and notice how they write, what they write about and what they leave out. Take one of their sentences and rewrite it in your own words.Deconstruct every sentence. Deconstruct every sentence.Take their sentences and rewrite it in your own words.
noahbrier
It’s my guide, and I agree completely. Not even sure this is useful for other companies and definitely not fiction.
brudgers
No space for poetry.
No space for fun.
All arguments from authority
That only missionary position
Is permissable.
sdoering
Quite in line with the Puritan heritage of the US.
/s
smartmic
I first thought this is from the German AI/LLM company Aleph Alpha [1] but learned it is a different enterprise albeit in the same domain. It's still quite a hustle and bustle in the zoo, I'm looking forward to a little more overview and a little less hype …
ritzaco
I had exactly the same confusion, also having heard of Aleph before. Then I googled to check and saw that "Aleph Alpha had pivoted away from training their own LLMs", so I figured it _was_ the same only to figure out that it isn't.
We're running out of names.
alienbaby
Writing like this leads to very terse, cold and impersonal communications. Perhaps it would be good for dry technical instructions or documentation, but naught else.
ngangaga
This doesn't distract that you built a business around chatbots. Who gives a damn about the writing style you use to pimp them on us
notepad0x90
This is nice but they forgot to mention the most important rule all guides like this should mention first: There are no hard-and-fast rules, all rules have an exception.
For example, including unnecessary sentences and paragraphs is somethings necessary. You can do without them but with them you get character, voice, a smoother transition. How do you know what is necessary and what isn't? That's the whole point of the rule I mentioned earlier.
samirillian
Which is also mentioned in Strunk and White but I doubt they read it
noahbrier
Ha. I’m the author of the guide and most certainly read it. Started my career as a journalist.
vanschelven
It's interesting to me that the article itself employs quite a few stylistic choices that are often marked as "obvious LLM tells" (numbered lists, boldface everywhere, and even the no-space emdash right in the opening paragraph).
I'm a heavy user of those things myself... still: interesting, given what they seem to be doing.
Veen
There's a footnote right at the bottom that says:
[1] Also, AI be damned, we are going to keep using em dashes!
throwanem
Well, I'm sure it makes a decent system prompt.
noahbrier
That’s mostly the point. https://newsletter.brxnd.ai/p/docs-x-ai-brxnd-dispatch-vol-8...
Barrin92
Do Don't
Think from first principles Repeat what everyone else is saying Draw from
diverse references and domains Stay confined to marketing jargon
Famously non-jargon, non-marketing language never encountered before in a tech blog
I recognize that the following is a classic HN "middlebrow dismissal" but I'd be wary of taking writing advice from a company that has this text (and nothing else) on their homepage:
> Alephic is an AI-first technology foundry built to tackle marketing's most complex challenges. We don't just advise—we engineer, prototype, and deploy custom AI systems that help marketing teams do the impossible.
I read this twice and I still have no idea what they do!