The only thing that makes me think it’s not AI is that ChatGPT wouldn’t make so many basic spelling and grammar errors. I counted six in this par alone.
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Spotted in the wild back in 2008. "Finally stepping up once more to their rightful place at the top of rock’s round table, the monarchs of music are ready to reign –with a totally revised regime." https://www.clashmusic.com/features/coldplay-interview/
Always amusing to me that teachers are so worried about ChatGPT writing everyone's essays when this is the kind of thing that people got *paid* to produce!
This may lead to a discussion which made me mildly unpopular on Twitter, where I suggested it’s part of a writer’s basic skill set to know how to write sentences.
It could be lack of exposure. Some of the writing I've had to edit genuinely made we wonder how many books, magazines or newspapers the writer can possibly have read. More than one has ended a quote with a full stop and end quote, followed by the two-word sentence 'He said.'
Is this from a writer you commissioned, or when you’re freelance editing? I suppose I’m wondering if (hoping that) filing such substandard dreck will make the writer less likely to be commissioned again, given how much more work the editor has to do.
In fairness, one example was from a correspondent and therefore not really a writer. But not a young correspondent: quite a wise, experienced man. Maybe he was just dashing it off.
When I was in charge of commissioning, I'd prefer the better writers, but I'd take better ideas from worse writers.
Yeah that makes sense. I remember one editor telling me about two writers who had written a particular column for him: the first filed clean copy but was always late; the new writer was always on time but the copy had to be largely rewritten.
Also, the aforesaid discussion on Twitter ended when I said it was hard to write well if you hadn’t read a lot, and someone said some people didn’t have access to books. I didn’t think my instinctive response would have led to a fruitful exchange.
Like I pollute my algorithm so I get Kent and Essex local newspaper stuff that might as well be AI but it is usually so specifically dire you know a human was doing most of it.
The most precisely devastating sentence in the whole review might be "Vuong’s second novel, The Emperor of Gladness, has a blurb by Madonna (‘beautiful writing’)".
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When I was in charge of commissioning, I'd prefer the better writers, but I'd take better ideas from worse writers.
…if one could only write.