The Pretty Sentences Are Lying to You

Polished writing used to suggest effort. Now AI can produce it in seconds, which means “sounds good” is no longer enough.

In this episode of HumanPrint, Christine Whitmarsh looks at the difference between a strong voice and a polished one, and why the prettier sentence may not be the sentence that actually sounds like you. If your writing sounds smooth but strangely generic, that smoothness might be covering over the place where your actual point of view should be.

This week’s HumanPrint check: find one sentence that sounds impressive but doesn’t say much. Cut it, then write what you meant before you made it pretty.