HACKER Q&A
📣 haebom

Non-native speaker here – how to avoid sounding like ChatGPT?


I've been active on HN for years, but lately I keep getting comments saying "this reads like AI" or "ChatGPT wrote this, right?"

At first, I thought it was a compliment – like my English was really polished. But I've realized it's actually an insult, suggesting my contribution isn't genuine. Here's the thing: English isn't my native language. I've worked hard to write clearly and logically. But now I'm worried that being too grammatically correct or structured makes me sound artificial.

What specifically makes writing "sound like AI" to you? Is it:

- Too formal/polite?

- Overly structured (intro-body-conclusion every time)?

- Certain phrases or patterns?

- Lack of casual tone?

I genuinely want to contribute to discussions here, but I don't want people dismissing my comments as bot-generated. Any specific advice for a non-native speaker trying to sound more human?

  👤 rawgabbit Accepted Answer ✓
Hi. I have not read many of your posts so do not have any direct feedback. As far as not sounding like LLM generated text, I believe the best way is to write concretely and to the point. ChatGPT is long winded and avoids saying anything specific. It is like listening to a politician talking for an hour and you realized he did not take a stance on anything.
👤 haebom
++ I'm a native Korean speaker, fluent in Japanese, learned English in high school and polished it during a college exchange program. Maybe that's part of why my writing feels "off" to native speakers?
👤 JojoFatsani
Don’t use bulleted lists for one thing
👤 gus_massa
Looking at your old comments, as a general recommendation in HN, avoid short comments. Try to write like 2 or 3 sentences. Not fillers, interesting sentences. Very short comments are usually not good for HN, but this is not a hard rule, there are plenty of exemptions.

Do you have a example where someone called you AI?

I make a lot of mistakes, but I'm a native Spanish speaker. [Hi from Argentina!] I probably use too many latin-rooted words. Luckily no AI decided to pretend to be a time traveler from Rome.