Writing With AI
Handing over the editing is a different bargain from handing over the writing
Used as a first-draft machine these tools cost you the thinking; used as an editor they cost you almost…
· 4 min read
Writing With AI
Drafting, editing and the point at which the tool stops helping.
20 articles · page 1 of 2
Writing With AI
Restarting a draft usually beats the fourth round of corrections
Corrections accumulate as patches on a structure that was wrong to begin with, and there is a point past which every further instruction makes the piece worse in a new way.
By Naina Sethi · · 3 min read
Writing With AI
Anything only you know is the part the draft will be missing
Generated prose is assembled from what is widely available, so the material that makes a piece worth…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Generated prose drifts towards the middle of everything it has read
The pull towards the average is not a stylistic flaw to be corrected with better adjectives; it is what the…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
The blank page and the last paragraph are not equally good places to ask
These tools are most valuable at the two ends of a writing task and least valuable in the middle, and…
· 4 min read
Writing With AI
Asking for a critique gets you praise with a caveat attached
Feedback on your own work comes back systematically kinder than it should, and getting something useful…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Editing someone else’s draft carries obligations that editing your own does not
Running another person’s writing through a tool changes their work, their voice and sometimes their…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Translation lands the meaning and loses the register
Contemporary translation between well-resourced languages is accurate enough to mislead, because the errors…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Publishing in a language you cannot read is a bet you cannot check
The usual safeguards all depend on being able to evaluate the output, so working into an unfamiliar…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Short writing is where a pile of options actually earns its keep
For headlines, subject lines and names the cost of generating a hundred candidates is trivial and the value…
· 4 min read
Writing With AI
A house style holds across fifty pieces only if it is written down as rules
Consistency across a body of work is an operational problem rather than a stylistic one, and the parts that…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Rewriting a piece for a different reader changes the argument, not just the words
Asking for a version aimed at another audience usually returns the same structure with the vocabulary…
· 3 min read