ChatGPT brings important lessons for academics’ own writing: Editorial

While many faculty members have focused on ChatGPT’s implications for student writing and assignments, James M Lang and Michelle D Miller encourage academics to consider the lesson offered by ChatGPT about their own writing. Noting the similarities in the impersonal, objective style used by many academics and the AI alike, Lang and Miller encourage academics to develop a warmer, distinctive writing voice. This distinctive writing voice – one that demonstrates passion for a topic, tells stories effectively, resists dumping evidence on a reader, and avoids heavy hedging and buffering statements – is particularly successful when attempting to reach a broader audience. “It’s not easy to write like a human, especially now, when AI or the worn-in grooves of scholarly habits are right there at hand,” they conclude. “Resist the temptation to produce robotic prose, though, and you’ll find that you’re reaching new human readers, in the way that only human writers can.”