Sentences are more than just a set of grammatical rules.
There are some things that just can’t be messed with, and with some sentences, phrases, or even books, it would be a travesty to meddle with it – it is perfect as it is – even with its human violations of ‘incorrect English’ incorporated into its message. If I can use an analogy; it is somewhat like adding another dob of paint to the Mona Lisa, or a few extra bars to one of Mozart’s symphonies, or perhaps taking a hammer and chisel to Michelangelo’s sculpture of David (where the hands are out of proportion to the rest of his body).
We can all have our “very good reasons” for doing a “final touch” to a masterpiece, but at what cost? Does the chiselling away of the “rude bits” on the statue of David make it better? Or the removal of the horns on the statue of Moses? (Which he admitted was a mistake, albeit, not his initially). Some things are best left alone – warts and all.
When it comes to expressing a thought, or an emotion, in English writing, sometimes (or even most times) the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling get thrown out the window – for the better!
Whaaaat!!!
In just one word (that I’ve used here as an example), we can see that no spelling checker, dictionary, or AI writing program would pass this as acceptable, but it is perfectly correct in doing what it is meant to do – expressing something more than what conventional Oxford English allows.
When it comes to writing, the way that a person expresses their thoughts in written form is a reflection of themselves. Nobody is perfect, so it follows that whenever someone is writing their autobiography, their use of the English language ought to reflect the person – the subject of the book – but also being mindful of the reader’s expectations too. What reader would put up with the sailor’s “th’ f’d main’sl hea’d fro th’ poop’s lee’wd side” for too long? or the use of long French phrases such as: si’il vois d’plait mon esprit tres d’loit? Don’t try to translate any of this, I just made it up! (I hope I didn’t say anything improper!)
I remember when music began to embrace the digital world. At first, it was the synthetic sounds of the Moog synthesiser which was treated more as a novel sound rather than music, but later on, we began to adopt ‘rhythm loops’ as being more “perfect” than what a human could produce for consistency. For instance, if you needed 13/16 timing, all you needed to do was dial it in, and it would produce a perfect rhythm for every bar for hours on end – but it was soulless. The ear could not appreciate what was not human. The ear was listening to a machine, and it knew that something was wrong – but it didn’t know what. It took decades before the audiophiles recognised the source of the problem – humans just loved and accepted human error in its imperceptible content.
Can human writing be improved? The answer is, Yes, most certainly. But the bigger question is, do we want what AI tells us what is the perfect sentence construction, perfect phraseology, perfect grammar? Or do we crave for the human touch in what we read?
I believe that just as the music world loves a live band, over and against piped music created by the most advanced musical algorithms on a MIDI keyboard, so too the world will eventually tire of fake novels created by fake authors displayed on digital hardware, and turn the paper pages of a genuine book once again – and enjoy the experience!
