Articles

AI1 is ruining writing. I don’t mean how AI slop is polluting the internet. I don’t mean how our reliance on them is degrading our skills. I mean flesh and blood writers avoiding certain patterns to duck AI-use accusations. The most common one: the em dash. The New York Times defended the em dash better than me. My gripe is the unexpected burden AI has put on humans — proving they are human. ...

Split. If you’re a dancer, you probably thought of someone, hips to the ground, with their legs parallel to each other. If you’re a runner, you might have thought of your pace at each mile in a marathon. If you’re a bowler, you might have thought of the dreaded 7-10 split. Same word. Different meanings. Language is like that. Its imprecision can leave things ambiguous. Artists can use this to great effect in novels, poems, plays, etc. ...