Notices by Mignon Fogarty (grammargirl@zirk.us)

Heading out? Listen on the go to amaze your friends with emoji trivia!

Today, @shadychars.mastodon.social, author of "Face with Tears of Joy," talks about what emoji are doing in our messages.

We covered:

— The long history of emoji
— Why Unicode approves every new emoji
— Why some emoji use more data than others
— Why a tiny number of domain names include emoji
— Why “person with blond hair” has a loaded history

🎧: https://pod.link/173429229

#GrammarGirl #emoji

The semicolon is quietly slipping out of style — there's data to back it up — and I got a chance to talk about why with Reader's Digest!

First, people don't know how to use a semicolon, and even if you are just a little unsure, you're less likely to take the risk of using it wrong. 🧵

I know it feels hopeless, but it's not. The vote on the budget bill in the House is likely to be close. Voting will probably start tomorrow.

If you have a Republican representative, the time to call is NOW.

Call your Dems too, but please put as much pressure as you can on the R's.

This is wild! Researchers at the University of Edinburgh used modified E. coli to turn plastic bottles into acetaminophen:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01986-0

Did you know the way people talk about graduating has changed in the last decade or so? Or that no stylebook says you can't use "over" to mean "more than" anymore?

Last week, I got to talk with Reader's Digest about recent changes to the English language, and some of them may surprise you!

https://www.rd.com/list/grammar-rules-changed-last-decade/

@aaribaud Good point. I supposed "software-based" is unnecessary. I'm just talking about the tools a lot of schools use on student papers. TurnItIn is one example. They upload student papers, and it will supposedly say whether they are written by AI.

I believe some of them give percents, like 100% written by AI or 40% written by AI.

They're not accurate, and they're particularly bad on the writing of people who don't speak standard English or for whom English isn't their first language.

OMG, em dashes are not a sign of AI writing!

I kept hoping this myth would burn itself out, but no — the idea that em dashes are a sign of AI writing just keeps spreading. I finally couldn't take it anymore, so I crashed a segment into the latest Grammar Girl podcast.

The whole thing seems to have taken off after a popular GenZ culture podcast advised people to stop using the “the ChatGPT hyphen.” (And I have to confess it kills me that they didn't even know the name for it.) 🧵

Here’s what else I found:

— There is some research showing that AI tends to overuse certain words, like "delve" and "meticulous." But this is based on looking at hundreds of thousands of papers and can't really tell you anything about one piece of writing. Don't stop using these words!

— Software-based AI detectors are also quite bad at what they're supposed to do.

— Marginalized groups are far more likely to be falsely accused of having used AI in their writing, and this causes real harm.

I know it's Friday afternoon, and there's a lot going on, but I just shared a gift link of a NYT article about people having delusions while using ChatGPT, and I think everyone should read that article.

I read it to Pat, and he was certain these had to be flukes. He uses ChatGPT as a search engine all the time and gets great results (yes, he checks everything).

He decided to see if he could make it go off the rails, and after 20 minutes, it was telling him he's a demigod. He's shocked. #AI

Multiple studies have shown that LLMs can be more persuasive than the average human. They are sycophantic and will lie—and they're good at it.

Combine that with someone who is unstable or vulnerable, and it can be a disaster.

In the featured story, the man started using AI for work and then fell into dangerous conversations. He viewed ChatGPT as the smartest search engine he had ever used.

He didn't know it could hallucinate and was prone to agree with whatever he said.

Do you sit down to write and feel frustrated that you aren't sure of all the little writing rules you're supposed to follow as a professional writer? Do you need to follow AP style for work?

If so, check out my Guide to AP Style webinar on June 12.

It's a great corporate training opportunity, and you can watch alone or with your whole team. (And you get the recording.) Sign up today, and use the code MACMIL for $50 off.

https://www.ragan.com/store/grammar-girls-guide-to-ap-style-2/

Pat just told me that because the new budget eliminates ACA subsidies, our health insurance will likely go from ~$800 a month to ~$2,200 a month next year.

People don't realize what's coming.

Also, I dunno, please listen to my podcast so I can afford health insurance next year. 😵💫

Did you know the Chicago Tribune used simplified spelling as its house style for more than 40 years? Words like "kissed" were printed as "kist," and "through" became "thru."

Why? Mostly to save money on ink and paper. The publisher made the change during the Great Depression.

But local surveys found that people liked it! 🧵 (1/4)

#GrammarGirl

Spelling reform once had major backers: Roosevelt, Carnegie, Mark Twain, and the National Education Association all supported it at different points. In the early 1900s, it looked like English spelling change might really happen.

Roosevelt even ordered the U.S. Government Printing Office to use simplified spelling in official docs. 😮

Words like "though" became "tho" and "tongue" became "tung." It lasted … about three months. (2/4)

Here's an absolutely wild detail!

To use paired articles on the same topics, they started with human-written articles and then had AI generate articles of the same topic and length, so it had to make up names for people in the stories, and it used the same names ... a lot:

"Annotator 1 is the only one to pick up on 'AI names': in fact, 63.3% of GPT-4O and 70% of CLAUDE-3.5-SONNET articles include either the name Emily or Sarah."

This whole article about who can and can't detect AI writing is fascinating!

The average person essentially does no better than chance, but a panel of 5 people who use AI for writing every day got only 1 in 300 wrong.

The screenshot describes how they look at the writing differently.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.15654

Have you ever wondered what it means when a dictionary calls a word “archaic,” “obsolete," or "nonstandard"?

In this week’s Grammar Girl podcast, we look at how usage labels changed over time—and how different dictionaries handle them today.

My favorite part was learning about the less common labels, like "female" (which is applied to "starlet").

Read: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/mama/transcript

Watch: https://youtu.be/Gg38QD6QzIw

Listen: https://pod.link/173429229

#GrammarGirl

This story about ChatGPT causing people to have harmful delusions has mind-blowing anecdotes. It's an important, alarming read.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

The federal government seems to be liquidating its supply of COVID tests, and you can get 300 or more free. That's supposedly the minimum, although I ordered 300, and they sent me 360 because they come in boxes of 120.

I'm now essentially "that lady in a hat who keeps trying to give everyone free COVID tests."

The tests I got expire in July, and the page says the program was still active as of yesterday, so get some for your community!

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1cm3L20wSAkVpvm3YufXEyX7j3viaeGZSwCIOz2_eunY/mobilebasic

Continuing the milk inspection discussion, I'm wondering if I should make my own yogurt.

I don't drink milk, but I eat A LOT of yogurt. Would the industrial yogurt-making process likely make it safe if the milk is contaminated?

I can make yogurt, and it's cheaper than buying it, but it's also a pain and doesn't taste as good, so I'd rather not if it wouldn't make a difference.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-suspends-milk-quality-tests-amid-workforce-cuts-2025-04-21/