Copy Editing / Readability Guide For Authors

[jakbird]

"In a world of digital noise and clutter driven by new generative artificial intelligence technologies, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has announced "slop" as the 2025 word of the year."  A recent news story

I've just ended a multi-year proofreading project for a friend's soon to be published academic book, initially translated from a foreign language by ChatGPT.  I agree AI is a useful start when translating, but what I've learned from the experience is it still takes quite a bit of work to produce a quality work.  For English as a second language authors, I recommend translating the entire story from one's own language to English, rather than the piecemeal approach of a section at a time.

For native speakers, I suppose AI helps, though I'd never use it.  As Teann points out, the lack of continuity, especially in longer stories, has no excuse.  It's laziness and a callous disregard for the reader's credibility.  I can't speak for anyone else's motivation, but for myself the reward comes from seeing the written word on the screen, from my hand, not a machine.  Granted, the audience for my stories is small compared to the others on Gromet, a handful a week.  Even so, if only one person enjoys my efforts it's worth the effort I put into crafting a unique story.  Cranking out slop with an AI might lead to immediate gratification from large view counts, but who deserves the dubious accolades, a computer?  Is losing one's reputation worth it?

Use AI to clean up grammar and syntax?  Sure, but change the content?  Never, that's the essence of creativity.  I cast my vote to keep out images, too.  There's a place for that; it's called a comic book.  Keep out the slop, Teann.

By the way, I have this idea for a long novel.  I've written the first sentence.  Can you fill in the next 120K words, edit as you see fit...
  Jack Peacock