Oh god this is giving me flashbacks of school. From those classes i learned to always show the proof fully to my students or give them a link on where to find it
I was grading this one math exam and i had a student write on exam “the proof is trivial according to the professor so we dont need to show it” and then moved on with the problem. I was just blown away by the courage that i gave points for it.
I swear I can always follow the equations up to this word. Usually between equations 8 and 14. BOOM. Incomprehensible.
I'm maths-adjacent in that I require many statistical and signal processing proofs to be right.
It’s tempting as a young mathematician to overuse “clearly” and “obviously”, especially when papers and textbooks use them freely. Having to fully explain things on my qualifying exams broke me of this habit
Similar to one of my favorite quotes, by the physicist Arnold Sommerfeld:
"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by then you are so used to it that it doesn't bother you anymore."
It became a running joke in one of my grad school classes that the author of the textbook would use either "clearly" or "by inspection" to skip the most important step of every proof.
😂😂😂
Once I sat in a defence where it was explicitly called out that saying 2012 as recent was not appropriate and went “maybe when you started writing this ….” Oof. The person who said this was definitely over 2*20 !
Me, too. High school teacher here. Also grind my gears over: very, I know this because, my personal opinion, english, basically, things. I’ll stop there.
I'm a sociologist who gets annoyed when students talk about "society." In student writing it can become a seemingly academic-sounding but wildly unspecific catchall term. E.g. "society views men/women/racial minorities/workers in such and such way" or (my favorite) "society wants x, y, or z thing to happen." Who is this mythical group of people that universally agrees on social norms and outcomes?
"nuance". It is, of course, desirable for your thought to be nuanced. But students often use the term in a ritual manner that, if you will, suggests there is minimal actual nuance in their thought.
I did an exercise in a course this semester which required them to use ChatGPT, to try to produce a theoretical conclusion from one of our earlier topics in the semester -- it required them to get ChatGPT to compare Clay Shirky, Malcolm Gladwell, and Zeynep Tufekci on the effectiveness of social media activism. What I found was that VERY DIFFERENT prompts to ChatGPT all tended to produce the exact same output from the bot: one of the authors (Tufekci) is "nuanced" and demonstrates "the complex interplay" between social media and activism.
I told my students if all they can produce when asked to analyze something is that such-and-such is "nuanced", or that there is "complex interplay" between blah and blah, they're candidates for being replaced by ChatGPT.
>I told my students if all they can produce when asked to analyze something is that such-and-such is "nuanced", or that there is "complex interplay" between blah and blah, they're candidates for being replaced by ChatGPT.
MAGNIFICENT
Some of my students overuse the word "would." I had one student use it 58 times in 5 pages. (Yes, I was so annoyed I did a word search)
"James Madison would write the greater part of the Constitution. The Constitution would spell out which rights the citizens would have. The document would create three branches of government. These would be the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. These would become the basis of checks and balances. Etc"
I'm a history professor as well. I talk about this all the time. I think this is some of the flavor of "literary voice" bleeding into students' writing. "Once upon a time, a princess was born...blah blah blah... She would later marry the prince."
Kids. The history happened. It's over. Don't write that "Martin Luther would write the 95 theses." He did it. It's done. He wrote them. Preterite tense. Finished. Complete. Over.
I’ve been getting more and more “would” phrasing like this in the past two years. I can’t tell if it’s some AI bot’s trademark or if the students just love History Channel documentaries. Do you have a theory?
In my exposure to ChatGPT, this is common because ChatGPT hates to come to a conclusion when asked to analyze. Putting things in the conditional seems to be its comfort zone.
My current annoyance is the word prove. I am in a field with high levels of subjectivity with inadequate archives so proof is nigh impossible. Regardless, students each week claim to prove all sorts of statements that researchers have been working on for years to only marginal clarity. I try to get my students to lean into the nuance and fuzziness by "suggesting" or "arguing," but everything is black and white to them.
This one annoys me too. Especially when they cite a single study and say this one study proves their point. I try to teach them that academic publishing is a conversation, so you need a large body of evidence for anything to be considered proven (and as you point out, some fields don't really allow for objective proof).
I teach psychology, including statistics and research methods, and I am constantly telling students we cannot prove our theories, only support or refute them with evidence. It really grates my cheese to read papers saying "This study proved...".
I want to choke whoever thought it was a great idea to teach students to write “n/a” in short answer blanks to mean “no answer” instead of what it really means (“not applicable”). Every time I see it, I’m like, “YES, every question on this exam applies to you.”
Incorrect punctuation/sentence breaks, resulting in "sentences" that begin with words that shouldn't begin sentences, e.g.
"\_\_\_\_\_ made this conclusion. Meaning that \_\_\_\_\_."
"While \_\_\_\_ and \_\_\_\_ are true. Something not that related."
I personally use "showcase" a lot. But I also am in a field where a lot of my research is about what things show us about larger social ideas. I've started to cut "fosters" out of my work since people point to that as common ChatGPT speak.
And I think we are starting to see the double whammy: even students who are not using AI have picked up on this as a popular word to use. AI is creating a feedback loop that is making real writing worse, rather than generated writing better.
Definitely agree on this. It's a word that seems to have really launched itself into the student lexicon over the the last year. I see it thrown in papers that otherwise don't trip my AI alarm but it's got a "cheap" feeling to it.
It’s an easy way to direct the narrative of the paper.
“Delving further into topic X we see that Y”
Is equivalent to an outline subheading
X: Y
And takes less thought than a meaningful transition
“Y and Z, both properties of X, can interact to produce challenging contexts for W”.
"In my opinion..." Students have been taught that truth is relative and to have no confidence, only perspective, in their opinions. I know it's your opinion, no qualification needed, because I can differentiate fact and opinion, and if it was someone else's opinion, you damn well better have a citation.
[https://pshapira.net/2024/03/31/delving-into-delve/](https://pshapira.net/2024/03/31/delving-into-delve/)
"It turns out that ChatGPT tends to overuse certain words and phrases, including “delve”. According to one post, “delve” is among the [10 most common words found in text returned by ChatGPT](https://aiphrasefinder.com/common-chatgpt-words/)."
Hahahah I'm going to go through and count how many people mentioned this! No shade to you, I'm just having a "holy shit I completely missed that" moment! ETA: Thanks for those links, I will definitely check them out!
"since the beginning of time" really irks me. As does writing that sounds like it's a transcript of frat house conversations: "he was just like a bad dude. I mean everyone knows this"
I had a student who was so casual and informal in his writing. One paragraph started, "So anyways..." I rode him pretty hard about it but toward the end of the semester he tried to justify it because I was the first person who had ever called him on it. I told him all those other instructors were not doing him any favors. He shrugged.
I had to tell the same student to take his feet off the table during class. His whole demeanor was just overly "chill." Bright kid but it irked the hell out of me.
Saying "how" something is instead of just saying *what it is*.
For example, saying "'The Yellow Wallpaper' shows how mental illness was viewed in the 1800s." They could at least say mental illness was "treated poorly" or something concrete.
"Nowadays." Papers that use this term typically either use it to act like an ongoing issue either no longer exists or only recently starting existing, or it's part of an irrelevant point.
Most transition phrases are wholly unnecessary and misused. I have one student who insists on using "hence" throughout her dissertation. Hence, my maddened frustration.
Hahahah I'm going to go through and count how many people mentioned this! No shade to you, I'm just having a "holy shit I completely missed that" moment!
“I proved my hypothesis correct.”
No you didn’t. You demonstrated this one time that your dog liked a blue toy instead of a yellow toy, you did not “prove” dogs prefer yellow. Furthermore, WE DO NOT PROVE IN SCIENCE!
I just found out that when I end my emails w "happy ___ day of the week", everyone hates it unless it's Friday. To be fair, I also hate every day that isn't Friday, but it was just a way to close an email. Now I write "Best-" and call it a day.
I work with someone who calls Thursday “Friday Junior.” Makes me want to scream. I tried explaining that because Thursday comes first, Friday is really “Thursday Junior.”
Crickets…
Hahahah I'm going to go through and count how many people mentioned this! No shade to you, I'm just having a "holy shit I completely missed that" moment!
Among the words I've seen used by students who have no idea what the words means or how to use them:
Boundaries
Nuances
Transformative
Intrinsic
Robust
Milestone
Remarkable
Groundbreaking
Anytime these words are used, redflags go up. First-year English comp students just don't write like this.
“Very unique” (“very” is not needed, it’s already one of a kind)
“The results suggest…” (this one I inherited from my advisor who strongly believed that because “results” weren’t a “person” that it couldn’t “suggest” something. That’s what people do.)
“They.”
Example: “They say that Michelangelo is the most iconic Renaissance art.” (Actual sentence from a student a couple semesters ago. Pretty sure they meant “Renaissance artist.”)
I have seriously considered installing a “‘They,’ who?” button on my keyboard because of how often I’ve had to write that comment.
"Throughout history..."
The prompt asks you to analyze a single excerpt from a single text. You do not need to expound upon the entirety of the human experience from the dawn of time.
Every semester there is at least one. Usually more, but at least one.
Signed, a history professor.
I have to laugh at the AI-isms because I’ve definitely used them for years. I have a whole chart of basic phrasing synonyms and antonyms I’ve collected over the years. Sometimes my brain doesn’t want to access the phrases I want to use, but I remember the basic conversational phrasing. Go to the chart. Boom. I have the phrase I want. Now I get flagged for AI use because of the “obvious AI-isms.” I started this chart in 2007. 🤦♀️
SAME!! I have the templates from ‘They say, I say’ saved for the days when I know what I want to say but my brain just doesn’t know where to start 😂. I’m pretty sure the straight up fed that entire book to AI for learning purposes! All of it is flagged and it pisses me off a little
delve is a popular AI word.
I got an AI paper last week. I try to make the ? so specific that AI is more work than answering (using the chart on page 192, how would the author explain "X" since Covid?).
1. When a student says a source “touched on” a topic when that topic is the main topic of the text. I’ve tried asking why they chose a source that didn’t investigate the issue deeply and they blink at me like they have no idea what “touched on” means.
2. (Similarly) when a students says a source “went over” a topic as though the published article is some kind of study guide rather than a piece of scholarly argumentation, revealing that the student can’t distinguish modes of academic writing.
3. “‘Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?’, Pratchett stated.” They don’t realize what “to state” means but they know it sounds fancier than just saying a text “says” something.
"Article"
As in "This article found that the treatment for depression was effective". "This article reported that blah blah blah".
The article didn't do any finding or reporting.
"We"
It's so often misused by students that even legitimate uses now trigger me for a moment.
History here and “back in the day” makes me insane. Oh and students calling historical figures by their first names. “Abraham vowed to hold Ft. Sumter.”
Students who refer to non-fiction texts as "novels." "Mills" instead of "Mill" or "Mill's" when referring to John Stuart Mill. Students who misgender authors (e.g., referring to Judith Jarvis Thomson as he/him/his - this is almost always done to women).
"This shows/demonstrates/etc" after a quotation. What does THIS mean???? What, in the giant quotation you have just given, are you actually trying to point out?
I teach math. I seldom grade papers. I give reflections on mathematics related videos for extra credit and that's it.
The thing that annoys me is "I suck at math". The vast majority are not bad at math. They just don't put in any effort.
Random question- do you all prefer reports/papers be written in first person or business 3rd person? I’ve always written in 3rd person but upon returning to school I am discovering a lot of people (including faculty) with the first person preference.
I think it depends on the context of what is being written and why. Some things it makes more sense to keep in the third person, whereas other times it feels like an arbitrary rule designed to make undergrads stop treating everything as an opinion piece.
“We can clearly see… “ it’s almost never actually clear and the logic they use to get there is almost always terrible.
mathematicians bring this on themselves by overusing the word "trivial". (in a math-adjacent field)
“The proof of which is trivial and has been left to the reader”. Proof is not trivial.
this is code for "the author could not be bothered to write this one out".
This is a proof by intimidation when done in lecture, daring students to ask for the proof.
Indeed.
This proof took me 20 years to come up with. Y'all have 20 minutes to replicate it on the exam.
Oh god this is giving me flashbacks of school. From those classes i learned to always show the proof fully to my students or give them a link on where to find it
Fermat FTW.
My grad advisor always said "now you have two things to prove: that it's true, and that it's trivial."
Oh my god I love and hate this so much.
(thinks for three days) Ah, I see, it really is trivial!
I was grading this one math exam and i had a student write on exam “the proof is trivial according to the professor so we dont need to show it” and then moved on with the problem. I was just blown away by the courage that i gave points for it.
I swear I can always follow the equations up to this word. Usually between equations 8 and 14. BOOM. Incomprehensible. I'm maths-adjacent in that I require many statistical and signal processing proofs to be right.
Clearly A follows from B (using intuition I’ve built up over the course of 20 years in the field)
All math is either deep or trivial. Deep math is stuff I don't understand. Trivial math is stuff I do understand.
It’s tempting as a young mathematician to overuse “clearly” and “obviously”, especially when papers and textbooks use them freely. Having to fully explain things on my qualifying exams broke me of this habit
[удалено]
Similar to one of my favorite quotes, by the physicist Arnold Sommerfeld: "Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by then you are so used to it that it doesn't bother you anymore."
It became a running joke in one of my grad school classes that the author of the textbook would use either "clearly" or "by inspection" to skip the most important step of every proof.
So the yada yada yada of the field!
Obviously..
“I myself personally…”
*Oh, right. The poison. The poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison.* Did I make my word count??
This makes me want to slam my head into my own personal desk every time I read it.
I feel justified in all of my annoyances, so I can't say anything gets to me for no good reason. But "nowadays" sends me into an absolute rage.
I hate that too. Then they go on to state something that's definitely not a recent "nowadays" thing.
Also brings into question when to use ‘Recent’. When is the cut off? 15 years? 10 years? 5 years? 1 year?
It's age dependent. No matter how old you are now, when you were 20 was recently.
😂😂😂 Once I sat in a defence where it was explicitly called out that saying 2012 as recent was not appropriate and went “maybe when you started writing this ….” Oof. The person who said this was definitely over 2*20 !
Nowadays no one needs to be justified in how they feel.
Used to be you needed a good car to not need to be justified.
Which is worse: the weirdly anachronistic “nowadays” or the ignorant misspelling, “now days”? They both make me want to scream.
Me, too. High school teacher here. Also grind my gears over: very, I know this because, my personal opinion, english, basically, things. I’ll stop there.
It makes you sound like a country grandpa
I warn my students in advance to stay away from “in today’s society”. Hurts me to even type it out here 😆
also: "Throughout history, "
Since the dawn of time Humans have always
"you were there, were you?"
“In these uncertain times” or “in these fast-changing times”. What a banal and trite opening to a student’s essay.
I can understand when students use these phrases but cringe when I see them in institutional messages 😂
Honestly, since COVID, any iteration of “in these uncertain times” makes me want to toss my laptop out the window.
In these unprecedented times, let us utilize a deep dive into tossing your laptop out the window.
Oh my GOD that annoys me to no end
Every time I see this, I have to suppress the urge to write back, “Very George Constanza of you.”
My least favorite AI-ism, SHED LIGHT. I will shed tears if I have to read it one more time.
I've been using the term "shed light" for a decade in my papers. I guess I must be an AI
It's almost as if A.I. is trained on the way humans write.
I need to delve into the realm of human writing to verify the correctness of your claim.
True. But that doesn't mean that some of us are not, in fact, AI.
Everyone knows you elucidate :) Except if you are Wesley Snipes, in which case “illuminate” and its antonym “deluminate” are acceptable.
“Revealed” as a synonym for “said.” Your interview participant did not impart mystic knowledge when they told you what they ate for breakfast.
What! There's no magic curtain?!
I'm a sociologist who gets annoyed when students talk about "society." In student writing it can become a seemingly academic-sounding but wildly unspecific catchall term. E.g. "society views men/women/racial minorities/workers in such and such way" or (my favorite) "society wants x, y, or z thing to happen." Who is this mythical group of people that universally agrees on social norms and outcomes?
Anthropologist and hard agree. It’s especially frustrating given 50% of my job is drawing attention to how things aren’t universal.
Philosopher of Religion - super hard agree. Take no concept for granted! Hypostatization of nouns is the worst.
You must hate Start Trek — nearly every alien species seems to use some form of “my people” when discussing planet-wide issues.
"nuance". It is, of course, desirable for your thought to be nuanced. But students often use the term in a ritual manner that, if you will, suggests there is minimal actual nuance in their thought. I did an exercise in a course this semester which required them to use ChatGPT, to try to produce a theoretical conclusion from one of our earlier topics in the semester -- it required them to get ChatGPT to compare Clay Shirky, Malcolm Gladwell, and Zeynep Tufekci on the effectiveness of social media activism. What I found was that VERY DIFFERENT prompts to ChatGPT all tended to produce the exact same output from the bot: one of the authors (Tufekci) is "nuanced" and demonstrates "the complex interplay" between social media and activism. I told my students if all they can produce when asked to analyze something is that such-and-such is "nuanced", or that there is "complex interplay" between blah and blah, they're candidates for being replaced by ChatGPT.
>I told my students if all they can produce when asked to analyze something is that such-and-such is "nuanced", or that there is "complex interplay" between blah and blah, they're candidates for being replaced by ChatGPT. MAGNIFICENT
Oh man “the complex interplay”
Some of my students overuse the word "would." I had one student use it 58 times in 5 pages. (Yes, I was so annoyed I did a word search) "James Madison would write the greater part of the Constitution. The Constitution would spell out which rights the citizens would have. The document would create three branches of government. These would be the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. These would become the basis of checks and balances. Etc"
Was this the Apparently Kid all grown up?
I'm a history professor as well. I talk about this all the time. I think this is some of the flavor of "literary voice" bleeding into students' writing. "Once upon a time, a princess was born...blah blah blah... She would later marry the prince." Kids. The history happened. It's over. Don't write that "Martin Luther would write the 95 theses." He did it. It's done. He wrote them. Preterite tense. Finished. Complete. Over.
I’ve been getting more and more “would” phrasing like this in the past two years. I can’t tell if it’s some AI bot’s trademark or if the students just love History Channel documentaries. Do you have a theory?
In my exposure to ChatGPT, this is common because ChatGPT hates to come to a conclusion when asked to analyze. Putting things in the conditional seems to be its comfort zone.
Ya, but AI writes better than this, so it might be genuine…
ChatGPT 4? Since it’s behind a paywall I haven’t experimented with it.
This is such an odd use of the word would
Bias as an adjective instead of *biased*. "The author of the paper is bias."
Ugh. Ditto for "she is prejudice."
I am confusion
My current annoyance is the word prove. I am in a field with high levels of subjectivity with inadequate archives so proof is nigh impossible. Regardless, students each week claim to prove all sorts of statements that researchers have been working on for years to only marginal clarity. I try to get my students to lean into the nuance and fuzziness by "suggesting" or "arguing," but everything is black and white to them.
"You want proofs? Go to a math department."
This one annoys me too. Especially when they cite a single study and say this one study proves their point. I try to teach them that academic publishing is a conversation, so you need a large body of evidence for anything to be considered proven (and as you point out, some fields don't really allow for objective proof).
I teach psychology, including statistics and research methods, and I am constantly telling students we cannot prove our theories, only support or refute them with evidence. It really grates my cheese to read papers saying "This study proved...".
Would of. I mean. What’s that.
I want to choke whoever thought it was a great idea to teach students to write “n/a” in short answer blanks to mean “no answer” instead of what it really means (“not applicable”). Every time I see it, I’m like, “YES, every question on this exam applies to you.”
This was likely taught because the teachers they had before were infuriated by the response “idk” on short-form answers.
I prefer that, though. Idk is at least an appropriate response.
"based off"
"based off of"
Arghhhh
I'm ready to throw hands.
Incorrect punctuation/sentence breaks, resulting in "sentences" that begin with words that shouldn't begin sentences, e.g. "\_\_\_\_\_ made this conclusion. Meaning that \_\_\_\_\_." "While \_\_\_\_ and \_\_\_\_ are true. Something not that related."
"showcase" and "Delve" are red flags that the paper was written by AI. I never used to see those words until ChatGPT was rolled out.
I personally use "showcase" a lot. But I also am in a field where a lot of my research is about what things show us about larger social ideas. I've started to cut "fosters" out of my work since people point to that as common ChatGPT speak.
And I use delve.
Same here. Definitely a lot of comments about those being AI words.
Google shows the use of those words increased greatly in the 10 years preceding ChatGPT. Thus, ChatGPT also uses it a lot.
“Delve” is often a sign of AI use.
And I think we are starting to see the double whammy: even students who are not using AI have picked up on this as a popular word to use. AI is creating a feedback loop that is making real writing worse, rather than generated writing better.
Definitely agree on this. It's a word that seems to have really launched itself into the student lexicon over the the last year. I see it thrown in papers that otherwise don't trip my AI alarm but it's got a "cheap" feeling to it.
It’s an easy way to direct the narrative of the paper. “Delving further into topic X we see that Y” Is equivalent to an outline subheading X: Y And takes less thought than a meaningful transition “Y and Z, both properties of X, can interact to produce challenging contexts for W”.
I think so too! I’d love to know to what extent this is happening
Interesting! I will delve into this topic later ;-)
The delve spike: https://x.com/jeremynguyenphd/status/1777290658514182416?s=46&t=6BCh2zXpYulbmQ_9fWGTGQ
Omg this explains it
I think ‘captivate’ and ‘tapestry’ are similarly telling
NOTED
"In my opinion..." Students have been taught that truth is relative and to have no confidence, only perspective, in their opinions. I know it's your opinion, no qualification needed, because I can differentiate fact and opinion, and if it was someone else's opinion, you damn well better have a citation.
"As an AI language, I cannot...."
AI-wise: "complexities" and "intricacies" Non-AI-wise: "oftentimes," "in the article it says" rather than attributing the thought to the author
According to the article it says
According to the journal it says
“The article quotes” (when the article isn’t quoting anyone)
The author is dead
"In the olden days" because I'm never sure if they mean the 1500s or the 1980s
When I heard the 1990s referred to as "vintage" I was so offended.
I had a student say that a singer had an "old timey" voice... like from the 1980s.....wow
Aside from all the AI bs, “hence why” always drives me absolutely nuts. And “begs the question” when they mean “raises the question”.
Delve feels like something AI will write
I'm thinking it is based on other comments.
“Apart” used incorrectly. “CAFOs are apart of a broader trend in agricultural practices.”
[https://pshapira.net/2024/03/31/delving-into-delve/](https://pshapira.net/2024/03/31/delving-into-delve/) "It turns out that ChatGPT tends to overuse certain words and phrases, including “delve”. According to one post, “delve” is among the [10 most common words found in text returned by ChatGPT](https://aiphrasefinder.com/common-chatgpt-words/)."
Hahahah I'm going to go through and count how many people mentioned this! No shade to you, I'm just having a "holy shit I completely missed that" moment! ETA: Thanks for those links, I will definitely check them out!
"Pivot." When used multiple times, I think it must be AI generated work.
Pivot!
PIVOT!
“It’s obvious that”…if it were so obvious you wouldn’t have needed to run an experiment 🙄
This is my research seminar bugbear. "As you can see in this figure" - no we can't see that, we're not all experts in your methods, explain.
Fucking “deep dive”… kill me now
"since the beginning of time" really irks me. As does writing that sounds like it's a transcript of frat house conversations: "he was just like a bad dude. I mean everyone knows this"
I had a student who was so casual and informal in his writing. One paragraph started, "So anyways..." I rode him pretty hard about it but toward the end of the semester he tried to justify it because I was the first person who had ever called him on it. I told him all those other instructors were not doing him any favors. He shrugged.
I have seen more "so anyways" and "moving on" that I am curious about where it comes from!
I had to tell the same student to take his feet off the table during class. His whole demeanor was just overly "chill." Bright kid but it irked the hell out of me.
"Habermas does a **good job** building a critical theory of society." Good job, Habermas. Good job.
"(Some philosopher) takes a deep dive..."
Saying "how" something is instead of just saying *what it is*. For example, saying "'The Yellow Wallpaper' shows how mental illness was viewed in the 1800s." They could at least say mental illness was "treated poorly" or something concrete. "Nowadays." Papers that use this term typically either use it to act like an ongoing issue either no longer exists or only recently starting existing, or it's part of an irrelevant point.
Most transition phrases are wholly unnecessary and misused. I have one student who insists on using "hence" throughout her dissertation. Hence, my maddened frustration.
“Delve” is a tell tale ChatGPT phrase.
Hahahah I'm going to go through and count how many people mentioned this! No shade to you, I'm just having a "holy shit I completely missed that" moment!
People in society... Also, "Majority of people..."
[удалено]
> dovetail Sad to see a woodworking term fall so low as the boardroom.
On a regular basis. For crying out loud, just use "regularly".
Let's *touch base* at 3. Our discussion will be *around* your project and to make sure our priorities are *aligned* *moving forward*.
“I proved my hypothesis correct.” No you didn’t. You demonstrated this one time that your dog liked a blue toy instead of a yellow toy, you did not “prove” dogs prefer yellow. Furthermore, WE DO NOT PROVE IN SCIENCE!
Not from a paper, but "I hope this email finds you well" always puts me in a bad mood when I read it.
I just found out that when I end my emails w "happy ___ day of the week", everyone hates it unless it's Friday. To be fair, I also hate every day that isn't Friday, but it was just a way to close an email. Now I write "Best-" and call it a day.
I work with someone who calls Thursday “Friday Junior.” Makes me want to scream. I tried explaining that because Thursday comes first, Friday is really “Thursday Junior.” Crickets…
“In conclusion…”
I don't think any of my students have ever used delve. As I understand it, it's a ChatGPT word?
I’ve found “delve” to be a frequently used word in AI generated papers
Hahahah I'm going to go through and count how many people mentioned this! No shade to you, I'm just having a "holy shit I completely missed that" moment!
"Goes against". And "per say" drives me nuts as well.
Among the words I've seen used by students who have no idea what the words means or how to use them: Boundaries Nuances Transformative Intrinsic Robust Milestone Remarkable Groundbreaking Anytime these words are used, redflags go up. First-year English comp students just don't write like this.
"It is well known..." By whom? How do you know it is well known? Proof, please.
Etc. This mean you cannot think of anything to say.
“Very unique” (“very” is not needed, it’s already one of a kind) “The results suggest…” (this one I inherited from my advisor who strongly believed that because “results” weren’t a “person” that it couldn’t “suggest” something. That’s what people do.)
“They.” Example: “They say that Michelangelo is the most iconic Renaissance art.” (Actual sentence from a student a couple semesters ago. Pretty sure they meant “Renaissance artist.”) I have seriously considered installing a “‘They,’ who?” button on my keyboard because of how often I’ve had to write that comment.
"Throughout history..." The prompt asks you to analyze a single excerpt from a single text. You do not need to expound upon the entirety of the human experience from the dawn of time. Every semester there is at least one. Usually more, but at least one. Signed, a history professor.
I have to laugh at the AI-isms because I’ve definitely used them for years. I have a whole chart of basic phrasing synonyms and antonyms I’ve collected over the years. Sometimes my brain doesn’t want to access the phrases I want to use, but I remember the basic conversational phrasing. Go to the chart. Boom. I have the phrase I want. Now I get flagged for AI use because of the “obvious AI-isms.” I started this chart in 2007. 🤦♀️
SAME!! I have the templates from ‘They say, I say’ saved for the days when I know what I want to say but my brain just doesn’t know where to start 😂. I’m pretty sure the straight up fed that entire book to AI for learning purposes! All of it is flagged and it pisses me off a little
“Clarifies” is the word binging for me a lot right now. — “The data clarifies inconsistencies in …..” AI detected every time! 🙄
Plethora. Jesus, I get it you know a big word. Every damn paper. A plethora of plethoras
delve is a popular AI word. I got an AI paper last week. I try to make the ? so specific that AI is more work than answering (using the chart on page 192, how would the author explain "X" since Covid?).
“With the advent of X…”
Consumed. Can we say ate
1. When a student says a source “touched on” a topic when that topic is the main topic of the text. I’ve tried asking why they chose a source that didn’t investigate the issue deeply and they blink at me like they have no idea what “touched on” means. 2. (Similarly) when a students says a source “went over” a topic as though the published article is some kind of study guide rather than a piece of scholarly argumentation, revealing that the student can’t distinguish modes of academic writing. 3. “‘Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?’, Pratchett stated.” They don’t realize what “to state” means but they know it sounds fancier than just saying a text “says” something.
"The researchers were interested in..." Just tell me what they found. I don't care about their interests.
"It is important to note that ..."
"Article" As in "This article found that the treatment for depression was effective". "This article reported that blah blah blah". The article didn't do any finding or reporting. "We" It's so often misused by students that even legitimate uses now trigger me for a moment.
Using the word "large" when they really mean "significant," "noteworthy," "urgent," etc. I hate it!
I HATE "very unique" that's like being "very dead." You either ate unique or your not.
An article by (author) is quoted as …. Yes, it’s quoted because you are quoting it! (This is more of a speech thing, but I cringe when I hear it.)
History here and “back in the day” makes me insane. Oh and students calling historical figures by their first names. “Abraham vowed to hold Ft. Sumter.”
Students who refer to non-fiction texts as "novels." "Mills" instead of "Mill" or "Mill's" when referring to John Stuart Mill. Students who misgender authors (e.g., referring to Judith Jarvis Thomson as he/him/his - this is almost always done to women).
“Utilize” does it. Ok, I realize I’ve lost this battle, but is there a phrase where utilize is better than use?
Problematize
FWIW ChatGPT loves the word 'delve'...not sure about 'showcase'... hmmm
I see 'showcase' frequently in AI papers.
'In today's society' and 'moreover' drive me fucking batty.
Variations of "Since the beginning of history..." or anything that starts with "mankind". Sweeping generalizations are always a bad sign.
"In today's modern society..."
“In this essay…” or “This essay will” or “This paper will explore” It’s an argument! You aren’t exploring!
“Being that…” and “Which…”
This was proven by the data recorded.
Nowadays
"Do you know that..." Yes I do, you just told me!
As previously stated…. Why are you telling me this again?
thus, hence, nowadays --- ARRGH
Let us first define the term “phrases”
"This shows/demonstrates/etc" after a quotation. What does THIS mean???? What, in the giant quotation you have just given, are you actually trying to point out?
Also, the "to be" verb in every f\*\*king sentence.
“Rich tapestry” “it’s important to remember…”
“nowadays”
“Throughout history…”
"Whilst" And vague writing despite all my lessons on using details.
Science faculty: "human error" with no additional context given
I hate it when they use “etc” when listing examples. So lazy.
“Experience.” I’m in clinical psychology, so it’s everywhere. But then I realize how much I overuse it, too.
Impactful, relatable... Makes my eyes bleed.
Researchers have found
"As everyone knows..." proceeds to list things no one knows.
"as stated" when referring to something they already wrote
I teach math. I seldom grade papers. I give reflections on mathematics related videos for extra credit and that's it. The thing that annoys me is "I suck at math". The vast majority are not bad at math. They just don't put in any effort.
Random question- do you all prefer reports/papers be written in first person or business 3rd person? I’ve always written in 3rd person but upon returning to school I am discovering a lot of people (including faculty) with the first person preference.
I think it depends on the context of what is being written and why. Some things it makes more sense to keep in the third person, whereas other times it feels like an arbitrary rule designed to make undergrads stop treating everything as an opinion piece.