From ‘Why not normalise use of AI in writing?’, by Amit Kumar, assistant professor in the Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh, in The Hindu, August 29, 2026: Whose authority is being protected by that…
I’m writing this post on Write, the new text composer/editor on WordPress.com. According to the official blog post, Write is a response to last year’s Creators survey, where “‘simplify the editor’ was the single most-requested…
You’re probably using AI to write. Both ChatGPT and Google AI Studio prefer to construct their sentences in specific and characteristic ways and anyone who’s been a commissioning editor for at least a few years…
The problem begins simply enough. A journalist finds a word that seems to fit almost everything. It might be “crisis”, “pivot” or the ever-convenient “impact”. It’s concise, authoritative, and headline-friendly. It appears once, then again,…
Why do you write? is a very difficult question to answer, so when an answer presents itself, you treasure it.
I realised some time ago that I completed 13 years of blogging around January or March (archives on this blog go back to March 2012; the older posts are just awful to read today. The…
I created my writing habit by performing it over a decade (and still continuing). When I first started blogging in 2008, I told myself I would write at least 2,000 words a week. By some…
If Saruman is the stupid shit people say, I have often found Grima Wormtongue is the use of the passive voice. To the uninitiated: Wormtongue was a slimy fellow on Saruman’s side in The Lord of…
August 2019 was a crappy month. I’m just emerging from nasty fevers of the body and mind and haven’t fully recovered yet. I’ve become more cynical in the last few weeks – which I didn’t…
Before the definitive version of Blade Runner was due to be released in April 2015, Michael Newton re-reviewed the film for The Guardian, where he wrote: If the film suggests a connection here that Deckard himself might still at this…
One of my favourite essays of all time – insofar as that’s a legitimate category – is one called ‘How to do what you love’ by Paul Graham, the startup guru. In it, he makes…
There’s no perfecting writing. It will always teach you about how to structure your paragraphs, which words to use where, what style or voice or inflections to adopt, or how best to tickle your audience.…