A Tiny Tool I Use to Make My Developer Content Stand Out

A few months ago I realized something depressing: most of my tweets, Discord messages, and GitHub profile sections looked exactly like everyone else's.

Plain text. No personality. Just another dev shouting into the void.

So I started looking for tiny ways to make my writing feel a bit more me without going full graphic designer. I didn't want to learn Figma for a Twitter bio. I just wanted my text to look a little nicer.

Here are three dead-simple things I now do regularly.

1. Use cursive Unicode text for social bios and headers

This is the cheapest win. You copy normal text, paste it into a cursive text generator, and get back Unicode characters that look like handwriting but still work everywhere: Twitter/X, Discord, Instagram, LinkedIn, even GitHub READMEs.

I use this cursive text generator (https://fancytxt.com/cursive-text-generator) when I want a heading or bio line to feel less robotic. It takes like ten seconds.

For example, this:

About me

becomes this:

𝒜𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓂𝑒

It's still plain text under the hood, so it copies anywhere. No images, no fonts to install, no CSS hacks.

A few places where it actually helps:

• The heading of your GitHub profile README


• Your Twitter/X bio


• A section title in a Notion doc you're sharing publicly


• Discord server rules or channel topics

Fair warning: don't overdo it. A full paragraph in cursive is unreadable. Use it for one line, maybe two.

1. Write your commit messages and PR titles like a human

This one sounds obvious, but I used to write commits like fix bug. Now I try to write fix: prevent duplicate signup requests on slow networks.

The second version tells a story. It gives context. And when someone is scrolling through the project history six months later, they actually understand what happened.

A good test: if your commit message works as a tweet, it's probably good.

1. Make your side project descriptions one sentence shorter

Every time I write an "About" section for a project, I force myself to cut it by one sentence. Then I cut it again.

The result is almost always better.

People don't read online. They skim. If your project description needs three paragraphs to explain, your project might be too complicated or your description is.

Try this format:

▎ [Name] is a [thing] that helps [specific person] [do specific thing] without [common pain point].

Example:

▎ FancyTxt is a text styling tool that helps developers make their social bios and headings look better without touching a design app.

One sentence. No fluff.

Why any of this matters

As developers we spend a lot of time optimizing code and almost no time optimizing how we present that code to the world. But presentation matters.

A slightly nicer bio won't make you a better engineer. But it might make someone stop scrolling long enough to check out your project. And sometimes that's the whole game.

If you want to try the cursive text thing, this is the one I use (https://fancytxt.com/cursive-text-generator). It's free, fast, and doesn't ask for your email. That's basically my ideal tool.