There is a punctuation anecdote which appears to have originated with Oscar Wilde, the 19th century Irish writer. Wilde was visiting an English country house and a guest he found annoying asked what he’d done all morning. Wilde said that he’d been reviewing proof sheets of his poems. When asked the outcome, he replied that he’d taken a comma out. The guest then asked if that was all he had done. Wilde’s reply was that, on serious reflection, he’d then put the comma back in again.
It’s a witty story which has been recounted many times since, but it also makes a good point about the complexity of human writing and, especially, the trickiness of punctuation. With short pieces I write, nowadays, I sometimes ask Claude.ai to punctuate them for me to see if it suggests improvements. The LLM not only offers an updated draft but also explains the changes it has made. It doesn’t give references for the punctuation rules it’s applied to confirm it’s not hallucinating or misapplying them. However, it’s not hard to look the rules up.
But AI, of course, offers so much more aid to writers than just grammar advice. For example, over the past year Google Chrome has – in the US – offered its “Help me write” feature. And for Super Bowl 2025 they based their advertising on 50 stories from 50 states about small businesses making good use of such AI tech. However, it’s not all gone smoothly. When used by the Wisconsin Cheese Mart, Google’s Gemini wrote them a piece which included the claim the “Gouda accounts for 50 to 60 per cent of the world’s cheese consumption”. This unlikely statistic appears to have come from one particular, highly promoted, website. Google later adjusted the Wisconsin advert so it only said that Gouda is one of the most popular cheeses.
Link: Not Gouda-nough: Google removes AI-generated cheese error from Super Bowl ad
This highlights how the rise of AI-supported writing may mean a loss of trust in what we read, just as Photoshop and its ilk (and now AI image-generation too) have reduced our trust in the reliability of photos. Of course, it’s true that we already question what we read thanks to things like bias, propaganda, gossip, low grade journalism, unchecked theories, dodgy web sites and so forth. But LLM’s can write with a convincing, confident and professional tone which may ramp up our distrust further.
Thank the Lord, then, that there is one place to go where trust in the written word is not misplaced. Jesus assures us that Scripture is absolutely dependable, down to the smallest marks on the page:
For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:18, ESV Bible 2001)
Yes, he’s talking about the first part of the Bible but the principle extends to it all. Yes, he’s talking about its original language and we have to work with translation. Yes, he means as first written but we have to compare manuscripts to ensure what that was. However, Jesus’ statement tells us that this process will yield truth, for God has authored these words for us and He will ensure their truth comes out. As Paul says: all Scripture is breathed out by God to do us good (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The Bible is writing that we can trust.
Photo by Katrin Leinfellner on Unsplash
All posts tagged under technology notebook
Introduction to this series of posts
Cover photo by Denley Photography on Unsplash
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.