What's the problem with "eliminate deictic language" ?

It is clear, specific, and terse. It keeps both llm tokens down and human prose-reading to a minimum.

This must be the reason why LLMs speak that way. They naturally reflect human tendency to signal smartness, while effectively achieving the opposite.

It’s not that. It’s that I tried a bunch of experiments on which instructions worked best. “Speak clearly using simple language” lost too many details. “Be sure the objects that pronouns reference are clearly identified along with any context you might assume I have but I don’t” worked better, but I got tired of typing that in each time. So I looked up words to match that phrase and “deictic” fit perfectly. The results were pretty good, and so I’ve been using that prompt ever since.

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize you were sharing the actual prompt.