Show the AI the spelling you want, not the list you ban

British spellings kept turning up in my personal notes repo, written by my AI assistants. I added a checker script that flagged them by name, and the problem seemed to get worse. I fixed 26 by hand in scripts and tests and assumed it was a bad day.

When I counted, 73 of roughly 84 instances sat in files about the rule, the checker included. This reminded me that a model is prone to emulate the words around it, so a banned list in the file it’s editing can work as a list of candidates to use.

I’m now showing it the spellings I want and keeping the banned list out of sight. If you steer an AI with examples of what not to do, what happens when you show it what to do?

A drawing studio split down the middle. On the left, a figure at an easel sketches a lopsided teacup in a cluttered room whose walls are covered with pinned sketches of that same teacup, each crossed out in red. On the right, the same figure in a calm, bare room copies one clean teacup sketch pinned at eye level, and the drawing matches it.

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