Crunch time in the workday when you realize you’re only 25% through your list and 75% of the day is behind you.
On my list, review copy. Mountains of it.
We had a massive snowstorm over the weekend. My husband was on his annual golf trip in Arizona (well timed, buddy), so it was just me and my adorable, tremendously unhelpful doodles versus the driveway. One of those storms where you have to stay on top of it or lose entirely. Out every hour, shovel a few inches, repeat. By the end of two days, my Whoop band logged ten hours of shoveling.
Copy review. Multiple websites, social profiles, articles, emails.
Can’t go over it. Can’t go under it. Can only go through it.
It’s a lot like shoveling. One sentence at a time.
We are a communications company. Words are how we make meaning and make sense of the world.
They are how humans share meaning, relate to others and make progress together.
I agree with Zig Ziglar: “Don’t be a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.” Specific is different. General is the same.
And now we have the greatest invention since sliced bread, ChatGPT and its various counterparts.
It’s like having an encyclopedia of all captured knowledge as a best friend, who never sleeps, never talks back and is ever-confident, sometimes too much so.
We are power users. We build GPTs to capture our brand voice. We use it to make plans, critique ideas…and yes, we use it as a writing partner.
And that’s how I know just how terrible the robots are at writing.
3 ways AI is weakening your ideas and your thinking, when you let it do all the writing for you:
You might be written by a robot if you use…
1. Contrast Positioning
The tell: defining ideas by what they aren’t.
It isn’t this. It’s that.
Don’t tell me what isn’t. Tell me what it is. If you aren’t clear enough to say what it is, you don’t understand it well enough to share yet.
This phrasing shows up constantly now that robots are doing so much of the writing. It’s familiar. It’s predictable. And it’s losing its effectiveness as a device.
There are moments when it works. When you’re introducing a genuinely new idea.
It’s not a taxi service. It’s a ride-share.
That sentence helped people understand something new by anchoring it to something familiar.
Most of the time, that’s not what’s happening.
2. Adverb Addiction
The tell: propping up weak thinking with softeners.
Truly. Quietly. Really. Actually.
If a sentence needs an adverb for emphasis, it isn’t strong enough on its own. Adverbs add flavour to weakly written ideas.
Stephen King said the road to hell is paved with adverbs. He’s right.
“He shut the door quietly.”
“He slammed the door.”
Get specific. Choose better verbs and you won’t need these terrible words.
3. Sentences that set the stage and go nowhere.
The tell: Introductory phrases that set context.
When clarity exists…
As alignment increases…
With the right plan…
Nothing moves. No one acts. Nothing changes.
When clarity exists, alignment improves and momentum follows.
These phrases set context. Highly useful in a select few situations. Overused almost always in robot writing.
They are a launching pad for weak ideas to follow.
Strong writing starts with people. It names action. It shows consequences.
Clear goals and decisions help teams move faster.
These three are the big offenders in my books, but there are plenty more.
If you’re still not convinced, let’s put it into context. You’re writing an email to someone you care about connecting with. You want it to be clear. Thoughtful. Effective. So you let ChatGPT write it.
The problem is, the patterns it uses make it obvious a robot wrote it. And the moment that’s obvious, the connection is lost.
In that case, your genuine attempt at a less-than-perfect email is way better than the robot version.
My advice.
Use the robots. They’re great as a thought-partner, getting the ideas out of your head and onto the page.
Also…
- Plan to cut the copy by at least 30% overall. So many extra words in it.
- Delete every descriptive word and see what’s left. Adding words like, innovative, amazing, revolutionary to an otherwise boring story doesn’t make it any less boring.
- Reword any sentence starting with an introductory clause that leads nowhere.
And give this some thought…
If writing is a way to clarify your thinking…
If you let the robots write for you, who’s doing your thinking?
If you’d like a ‘let the robots write’ style guide with these and other watch outs, reply to this email. I’ll flip it over to you.
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