a terrible time to be a writer

in this day and age, with the rise of… oh who am i kidding, let’s just get to the point.

blessed by the algorithm, i stumbled upon a gem this morning. as frustrating as it may be, i have to admit that the differences between AI and human writing are very apparent after watching it, just like evan said in the video.

This video was more than informative — it was a journey, a transformation, a metaphorical yoga retreat for the mind.

lmao. welp, truly a terrible time to be one of the few people who enjoys writing with these punctuations.

dashes, semicolons, commas, and other punctuations

i’ve been using many punctuations in my writing for as long as i can remember. i am, in fact, actively trying to do so while also trying to not overuse a particular one, all from a perspective of how i would like to read it myself. having strategically placed punctuation makes it much easier for me to read and separate the concepts in my head, while also keeping the writing concise and the sentence structure intact.

my favorite dash

em dashes are my favorite, even though i know they’re meant to be used in places where a comma or a semicolon would suffice. even though (arguably, don’t quote me) they’re meant to not have spaces around them. even though they’re hard to type on a physical keyboard without a numpad. i still use them because they look clean and feel better in places where a comma isn’t enough, and a full stop would be too much.

i mean sure, i don’t use them when i’m casually chatting with a friend and trying to get my point across quickly. but it is now easy to type one in a virtual keyboard on the phone if i ever need to, and when i’m writing an article on my computer, i either use the win + . shortcut or have it ready to be pasted anytime in my clipboard.

colons are okay

colons (and semicolons) are fine. i don’t reach for them as often as i do with em dashes. in fact, i actively avoid them unless i really have to use them to describe a list or something, that’s probably the only place where i would use them.

commas are great

commas are nice, i use them a lot. they’re very easy to type in any keyboards, and help me articulate my thoughts just like how i would’ve said it out loud. it’s the only punctuation i can think of to mimic the natural pauses in speech, and unlike em dashes, it’s not so long that it breaks the flow of the sentence.

the llm paradox

“am i an llm for using fancy punctuations, or did i use fancy punctuations because i am an llm?”

if you didn’t get that, i guess it’s time to start watching jujutsu kaisen. jokes aside, now that i’ve watched the video though, i can’t help but wonder if i should just stop using them altogether. em dashes and rule of threes in particular are the two things i like the most just because of how nicely they tie the sentence together. but, because people followed them in writing, and now that AI is trained on them as well, it’s considered a red flag.

there is… one very obvious red flag mentioned in the video that you might’ve realized by now. it isn’t just the use of punctuations, the parallel sentence structures, or the rule of threes — it’s the combination and context of all of them together. (see what i did there?)

trust your gut

anyways, the video did a great job in getting the point across, better than i would’ve been able to do in writing here. i do still want to highlight a few things here.

one of the most apparent things is the exaggerated empty praise, or when it’s filled with vague statements, saying a lot while saying nothing at all with empty language. sometimes, it will also try too hard to have meaning by using analogies and metaphors that don’t really make sense.

AI writing feels generic because it is, it removes you from the equation, and what’s left becomes bland. it cannot insert itself into the context, and it lacks the personal touch that makes our writing feels unique, how we naturally connect our memories and personal experiences with the topic at hand.

i truly can’t unsee it now, AI writing is everywhere. maybe that’s why part of me tries to unconsciously write informally…