My PhD advisor rewrote himself in bash (2010)

Tooling and Alternatives

• Many like the shell scripts for quick checks (passive voice, weasel words, duplicates), especially outside Emacs.
• Others prefer integrated tools: Emacs modes, vale.sh, and classic Unix diction/style. Vale is praised for CI integration and configurable style rules.
• A web UI port of the scripts appears useful but had early regex/context bugs; these were iteratively fixed.
• Several argue LLMs could do richer, context-aware editing than brittle bash/regex, though one person reports LLMs missing obvious typos.

Adverbs, Weasel Words, and Nuance

• Some strongly endorse stripping adverbs and “weasel words” (“quite”, “very”, “surprisingly”) to reduce fluff and vague claims.
• Others counter that this often changes meaning: “quite difficult” ≠ “difficult”; “various methods” carries extra information.
• There is extensive debate on “quite” in English: meanings range from “somewhat” to “completely” or sarcastic negation, depending on dialect and tone—making it risky in technical writing.
• Critics suggest replacing beholder words with data and explicit comparisons (e.g., “3% vs expected 10%”) rather than emotional framing.

Technical Writing vs. Readability

• Some readers of technical docs and papers plead for maximal concision and structure; flowery prose and soft qualifiers are seen as time-wasting.
• Others insist slight “fluff” and qualifiers can prevent over-precision and better reflect messy reality (“very close” vs “close”).
• A humanities-oriented view warns that rule-based scripts lack semantic understanding and may push blind prescription; tools should flag, not auto-edit.

Discipline-Specific Issues

• In mathematics, there is a debate over whether “monotonically increasing” is redundant or clarifying compared to “increasing”; commenters give conflicting definitions and examples.
• One thread contrasts expectations in medicine vs “hard sciences” about error bars and claims like “surprisingly low” rates.

Academia, Training, and Resources

• Several note that in many fields, writing quality ranks below speaking skills and politics, though poor writing can still hurt reviews.
• Multiple books and talks on mathematical/scientific writing are recommended as primary training, with linters as a final polish.