A Word, Please: ‘The Beyoncé of grammar’ and why AI still needs writers

At a time when people refuse to believe doctors, journalists and anyone who says we went to the moon, everyone accepts the AI industry’s claims about AI. It’s genius. It’s going to revolutionize life as we know it. It’s going to render all us workers obsolete so we’ll be unemployed and homeless but at least we’ll be wowed by TikToks of Jennifer Lawrence talking through Steve Buscemi’s face.

First on the chopping block, they say: editors and writers. Like me.

To check the ETA of my bleak future, I asked ChatGPT to write a grammar book in the style of June Casagrande.

The software cheerily obliged, promising to “channel my inner June Casagrande and create a grammar book that’s fun, fierce, and friendly — just like ‘Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies.’” Minus the cash advance for me, of course. Minus even the cover price of two books I wrote that another AI program literally stole, according to an Atlantic magazine database.

The ChatGPT book begins: “Let’s face it: grammar has trust issues. Not because it’s sneaky or complicated — though we’ll admit, it has its moods — but because you were probably introduced to it by someone who thought diagramming sentences was a fun Friday activity. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.”

Smooth, well-structured, accessible. At first, the writing seems impressive. But wait, “trust issues”? ChatGPT meant that people don’t trust grammar, which itself is a little off. But to “have trust issues” means to be incapable of trusting others. So the first sentence doesn’t make sense.

The word “complicated” is also odd. Being complicated doesn’t undermine trust, exactly. “Spoiler alert” means something you have yet to learn, not something you learned decades ago. Then there’s “we’ll admit.” Who’s “we”? This isn’t an article in a sassy magazine in which the writer is speaking on behalf of the editorial staff. This is a book by just one author — an author who has written five books and more than 1,000 columns without once writing in the plural first person. (Nice job channeling me, ChatGPT.)

“We” appears a lot in the first few pages, like after saying grammar has a bad reputation, adding: “We’re going to clear that up.” Then, while talking about the voice in your head that makes you fear grammar, adding: “To that voice we say: shut up.”

Check every book on your shelf and you probably won’t find a single one written in the plural first person — and definitely not if the book has just one author.

Then, this “intelligence” gets even less intelligent by switching to the singular first person a few pages later: “I’m going to give you the tools you need.”

ChatGPT’s manuscript contained lots of illogical statements, like the example sentence “My cat screams at 3 a.m.,” the assertion that verbs are “the Beyonce of grammar” (with no explanation why) and, my favorite, this bit about comma splices: “Grammar says, ‘not today, Satan.’”

ChatGPT got facts wrong, too. It said the “are” in “We are never getting back together” is a linking verb. It’s not. It’s an auxiliary verb.

I could go on. But in the middle of writing this column, and I swear this is true, I was given a freelance assignment to revise a short video script written by AI and to “make it sound more natural.”

The script wasn’t just unnatural sounding. It was illogical, misguided and utterly clueless about what to focus on. It boasted at length about an AI writing program that could take “P.R. pitches” and instantly transform them into newspaper articles.

That might sound great to P.R. firms making the pitches, but this script was promoting a technology to benefit newspapers and their readers — oblivious to the fact that journalism doesn’t mean printing whatever P.R. firms want.

I rewrote the whole script, emphasizing the important work reporters do and how the new AI tools could support their journalism. The editor who assigned me the project wrote back, “Your version is SO GOOD” (emphasis hers).

I’m still reeling from the irony. A human writer did an objectively better job than AI at writing advertising copy to promote … an AI writing program.

So the next time you hear tech billionaires boasting about AI products destined to change life as you know it, remember their own words: Not today, Satan.

June Casagrande is the author of “The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.