Unchecked Writing

Today, let's take a few looks into my writing process and how it's impacted (or not) by AI.

1.

Earlier this year, I mentioned that I couldn't live without Grammarly. I’ve used it for years, correcting every missing comma or swapped tense. A reader responded, asking if I'd considered that maybe Grammarly was a crutch and I didn't actually need it as much as I thought I had. Reader, it was an interesting thought.

A few months ago I stopped using it all together — it’s not even installed on any of my computers. At first, I was afraid I’d miss the tool but the reality is that I do not — in fact, I trust my writing more than I ever have.

Apple’s Writing Tools, while still not great, help flesh out sentences I think are out of whack. I’ve also taken to using ChatGPT as a developmental editor (more on that in a minute).

I have not missed Grammarly with only one exception: work tools. Teams and Slack ignore macOS’s native spelling and grammar checking tools, which means they’re where I miss Grammarly most.

My question for you is simple: have you noticed a change in my writing? I’m very curious, so please hit reply and let me know.

2.

AI-generated articles now outnumber ones written by humans. You all, it only took three years from ChatGPT’s release for it to fill up the internet with slop. Talk about disheartening.

3.

Speaking of ChatGPT, tangentially related to the uninstallation of Grammarly, I’ve started using ChatGPT as a simplistic developmental editor. I’ve given the chat some serious limitations and prompting to focus solely on argument delivery and overall article clarity.

Once I’ve fully written and edited the articles, I ask the chatbot if any of the points land flat. Most suggestions it provides are incredibly minor, which is interesting. I honestly don’t know if the bot is being sycophantic or if my writing is as polished as it lets on — my guess is it’s somewhere in between.

I’ve found this use of AI to be a helpful — but not necessarily essential — part of my writing. So, again, what do you think? Is my writing worse for wear? Unnoticeably changed? Let me know.

4.

Finally, while we're talking about AI, let's talk em dashes. They seriously get a bad rap as an “AI tell.”

The em dash has been my favorite punctuation mark since I began writing in the early aughts. Yes, I know that I don’t format them properly to certain style guides, but I happen to like the space before and after the lovely em dash — it helps separate the thought and distinguishes the em dash from the lowly hyphen.

Apparently OpenAI realized everyone was equating the em dash with AI-generated writing and now allows you to tell ChatGPT to stop using them. So, I guess we’ll all have to go back to detecting generative AI writing the old fashioned way: by its complete lack of life.