What gets lost when we optimize writing for speed, clarity, and readability?

I was musing over the idea of ChatGPT affecting my own writing in several ways: I am often likely to be rather verbose. I sometimes use unnecessarily “creative” language. Plus, I frequently take liberties with punctuation (according to my dearest editor…).

So I found myself imagining Jane Austen sitting across from ChatGPT, patiently waiting for feedback on the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice. Once I started down that rabbit hole, I couldn’t stop. Before long, Dickens, Plath, Morrison, Dostoevsky, and Chaucer had all been summoned for a quick editing session.

JANE Austen:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

ChatGPT: Jane, you might want to consider this instead:

People often believe that rich single men want to get married.

Charles Dickens:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”

ChatGPT: Charles, dear, try this on for size. It will make your readers less exhausted:

It was a contradictory time.

Sylvia Plath:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor….

ChatGPT: Oh Sylvia. Try to look at the bright side now and again… Here’s an idea for you:

I saw many possible futures ahead of me.

Dostoevsky:

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”

ChatGPT: Golly, Fyodor. Our readers have enough troubles in pre-revolutionary Russia. Let’s give them less to brood about. Try this:

Intelligent people often experience emotional pain.

Toni Morrison:

Here is the house it is green and white it has a red door it is a very pretty here is the family mother father dick and jane live in the green-and-white house they are very happy see jane she has a red dress she wants to play who will play with jane see the cat it goes meow-meow come and play come play with jane the kitten will not play see mother mother is very nice mother will you play with jane mother laughs laugh mother laugh see father he is big and strong father will you play with jane father is smiling smile father smile see the dog bowwow goes the dog do you want to play do you want to play with jane see the dog run run dog run look look here comes a friend the friend will play with jane they will play a good game play jane play

ChatGPT: Toni! Whatever has happened to our rules about sentence structure? Try this instead:

A happy family lives in a nice house.

and let’s go a bit further back with this one:

Chaucer:

When April with its sweet showers
Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every vein of the earth with moisture,
By whose power flowers are created…

GEOFF!!!! My goodness gracious! Did you have too much mead with your breakfast today? Let’s try to make this more reasonable for your less readerly audiences, shall we? Here’s an idea:

April rains help flowers grow.

Conclusions

Apparently Jane Austen wanted to tell us that wealthy bachelors seek wives. Dickens wished to inform us that history is complicated. Sylvia Plath was overwhelmed by choices. Chaucer noticed that spring had arrived.

Thank goodness technology has finally helped us get to the point.

No actual literary giants were harmed in the making of this experiment.

But their ghosts remain deeply offended.