Showing all posts about language
AI slop named word of 2025 by Macquarie Dictionary
29 November 2025
The Australian dictionary’s word of the year committee were scathing, to say the least, of their pick:
We understand now in 2025 what we mean by slop — AI generated slop, which lacks meaningful content or use. While in recent years we’ve learnt to become search engineers to find meaningful information, we now need to become prompt engineers in order to wade through the AI slop. Slop in this sense will be a robust addition to English for years to come. The question is, are the people ingesting and regurgitating this content soon to be called AI sloppers?
I’d hoped Macquarie Dictionary would make IndieWeb their word for 2025. Enshittification, by the way, was the 2024 word of the year.
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artificial intelligence, Australia, language, trends
ChatGPT to remove em-dashes from AI generated output if asked
17 November 2025
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, posting on X:
If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it’s supposed to do!
It finally does what it’s supposed to do.
Am I to think AI agents were not supposed to include em-dashes in their input (and here I go) — unless said use was grammatically correct — all along? Were agents initially supplied a list of punctuation marks and told they could be used as they saw fit?
In other words, quite indiscriminately?
How unfortunate to think poor training of agents in the correct use of em-dashes, and Oxford commas, has lead to the perception that any text containing them is AI generated.
Here’s hoping other AI companies follow ChatGPT’s lead, and the rest of us can resume using em-dashes, and other maligned punctuation marks, as intended.
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artificial intelligence, language, trends
Two numerals, six seven, are the dictonary.com word of 2025
11 November 2025
67 has been named word of the year by dictionary.com:
If you’re the parent of a school-aged child, you might be feeling a familiar vexation at the sight of these two formerly innocuous numerals. If you’re a member of Gen Alpha, however, maybe you’re smirking at the thought of adults once again struggling to make sense of your notoriously slippery slang. And if it’s a surprise to you that 67 (pronounced “six-seven”) is somehow newsworthy, don’t worry, because we’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means.
I’m all for it. I use the phrase constantly. I say six, seven, then pause. I resume by adding, eight, nine, ten. That way people think it’s an anger management technique.
Blogging and anger management goes hand-in-hand after all.
I would prefer it if 67 were styled six-seven though, so that it looks like an actual word. But then again I think presenting numerals as a word is part of the point of using the term in the first place.
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We must not let AI agents scare us off using em dashes in our writing
11 September 2025
I really miss using em dashes in my writing. Ever since content creators started using ChatGPT to help (or supplement) their writing, em dashes have become indicators of AI use.
Something is really wrong — seriously — when people feel they have to stop using certain punctuation marks for fear of their work being considered to be generated by an AI agent.
I’m a prolific user of em dashes — as I’ve said before — and have no intention of doing away with them just because AI agents have the good sense to include em dashes in their output.
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artificial intelligence, language, trends
Enshittification, word of 2024, a book by Cory Doctorow 2025
11 August 2025
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It, by Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and author Cory Doctorow, will be published in October 2025.
Doctorow coined the word enshittification in 2022. Long story short, the neologism describes how online platforms go from being useful to useless, on account of the greed of their owners.
Facebook and Instagram are good examples of enshittification at work. Once both social networks were populated by content created by members. As time has passed though, much of what appears on these platforms is effectively advertising.
Enshittification was named the 2024 word of the year by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary.
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Move over Oxford commas, em dashes a tell tale sign of AI use
23 April 2025
Another punctuation mark I’ve been a long time user of — the em dash — is apparently synonymous with text created by AI chat bots. Marvellous. You can see two instances of em dashes in the first sentence of this post. Last October I learned the presence of Oxford commas hinted at the use of AI to generate written work. If that is indeed the case, at least AI, by choosing to use the venerable punctuation mark, is showing its intelligence.
Even if that, as an Oxford comma fanboi, makes me look bad.
But back to em dashes — which you’ve probably noticed I apply incorrectly here, by placing a space between it and a word, instead of joining them up like this—the observation em dashes were indicative of AI’s presence, was made by LinkedIn influencers. LinkedIn influencers? Are they even a thing? According to these influencers however, the presence of em dashes can only mean text they feature in was generated by an AI technology.
Real people, it seems, use hyphens instead. How bizarre. Hyphens, of course, serve a completely different purpose. They are used to join words together. Em dashes are used to add a different, but possibly related, idea to a sentence. Why on Earth then use a hyphen in place of an em dash? But the LinkedIn influencers may be onto something. On most keyboards, the hyphen shares a key with the underscore symbol. In my experience though, there is no dedicated em dash button.
On my writing app, called Writer, I need to type in two colons, with three (oh, the irony) hyphens — or minus signs — in the middle, like this: :- – -: to render an em dash. Other word processors might allow this by, say, pressing the ALT key and entering a sequence of numbers, or trying the Insert, Special Character command, in the app’s menu bar. The point here though is hyphens are a little easier for a person to add, than are em dashes.
Therefore, the only possible conclusion that can be reached, by LinkedIn influencers I grant you, is that em dashes could only be the work of an AI app, never a lazy human. Certainly not one who won’t tap out a few extra key strokes, or copy and paste an em dash that may be elsewhere on the same document. But I doubt any of these thoughts crossed the minds of the LinkedIn influencers.
They were probably trying to chase down their next this-idea-might-go-viral post. If only creating viral content were as simple as selecting some random punctuation mark, and making up some absurd claim about it.
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artificial intelligence, language, trends
Book publisher Simon & Schuster says no to celebrity blurbs
17 February 2025
Lucy Knight, writing for The Guardian:
[] soon we may not see so many of these author blurbs — Sean Manning, publisher of Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint in the US, has written an essay for Publishers Weekly explaining that as of this year he will “no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books”.
A celebrity blurb is where a well known author offers some brief praise for the work of a new, or not so well known, writer. Examples could be something like: “a veritable page-turner”, or “a forceful new talent”. But it’s not always clear whether the author offering the endorsement has even read the book in question. That’s one reason why I take a dim view of celebrity blurbs.
I’m more interested in a novel’s synopsis, and then — where possible — seeking out some consensus as to whether the book is good or bad, through a website like Hardcover. After all, life is too short to spend reading novels you might not like.
But what surprises, and irks me, is that blurb is an official book publishing term. It sounds like a colloquialism, which it very much is, but it seems like a word people use because they don’t know the correct term to use. Sarney is a colloquialism, but sandwich is what is meant.
Wikipedia defines a blurb as a “a short promotional piece“, and celebrity endorsements aside, are usually more a short, yet enticing, summary of a novel. Here is the publisher’s blurb for Christian White’s most recent novel, The Ledge, which I wrote about last week:
When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered. It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed. In The Ledge, past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.
That’s more like a synopsis, or even a summary, albeit with a promotional bent. Films are marketed with a similar sort of write-up, but synopsis is usually the go-to term, even though people sometimes call them blurbs. But blurb sounds like the sort of word I might otherwise be, maybe with some trepidation, looking up on Urban Dictionary.
Henceforth, I shall do away with the blubbery blurb, and go with synopsis or summary.
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books, language, novels, publishing
Swearing may be a sign of intelligence, creativity… thank f**k for that
11 February 2025
The next time someone takes exception to your “bad language”, point them to this research:
Swearing may also be a sign of intelligence, is associated with less lying and deception at the individual level and higher integrity at the society level, and may be a sign of creativity. The offensiveness and the positive or negative consequences of swearing is highly dependent on the context.
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The 2025 Banished Words List has recently dropped
16 January 2025
Lake Superior State University’s annual list of words and phrases we should cease using, was published recently. Among inclusions are game changer, era (you know why…), IYKYK (If You Know, You Know), and sorry, not sorry, which I can’t stand. Another term is dropped, but I don’t really take any notice off it, though maybe I should.
Once edgy and cool, “dropped” has become more of a letdown. Whether it is an album, a trend, or a product, this term has fallen flat. “Books, music, and all kinds of unnecessary things are currently being ‘dropped’ rather than introduced, released, or offered for sale. Banished for overuse, misuse, abuse, and hurting my head when all that “dropping” stuff lands on me!,” laments Susan of Littleton, CO.
Swedish House Mafia have dropped a new album. I’ve dropped a new blog post. But the image that usually forms in my mind is the item in question has ended up on the floor, rather than landing in a bookshop shelf, or a play-list, or whatever.
Also, reach-out is absent from the list. Or did the term feature in a previous year? Please feel free to contact, or message me, if you know.
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2024 word the year: enshitiffication. I nominate IndieWeb for 2025
2 December 2024
The neologism, devised by blogger and author Cory Doctorow, just over two years ago, has been named the 2024 word of the year by Australian English wordbook, Macquarie Dictionary.
This must be some sort of record, between the time a new word is coined, comes into popular usage, and then named as a dictionary’s word of the year. Enshitiffication was among sixteen other candidate new words (PDF) shortlisted by Macquarie, and also won as the People’s Choice word.
It seems apt enshitiffication is selected as word of the year, given the rise in prominence IndieWeb/SmallWeb has experienced during 2024. If there’s any sort of counterpoint to the declining integrity of many of the social media platforms, IndieWeb/SmallWeb is it.
Macquarie accepts suggestions for their word of the year, and this might be an opportunity to bring the community/movement/concept/notion, however you like to describe IndieWeb/SmallWeb, to the notice of more people.
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