Non-Standard

Pursuant to my previous post regarding the en dash (wherein I beseech readers to consider British style selections for the dash parenthetical), I further propose the adoption of a little non-standard grammar to more plainly distinguish human writing from that which was contrived by large language models.

I'm not suggesting we simply make up new rules! However, we might consider leaning a little on historical precedent.

I've been reading Sense and Sensibility, where I've become smitten by Austen's use of run-on sentences which employ a lowercase letter after a terminal punctuation mark. You'll often find this follows a mid-sentence interrogative. "Would it be distracting? or merely a charming affectation?" Sometimes, after a mid-sentence exclamation. "Distracting? certainly not! if anything, it's more conversational."

Please don't mistake this as a step in the direction of sam altman's all-lowercase tweet style. Nor need we go so far as Laurence Sterne's exhausting run-on sentences ; full of spaced semicolons ; like an ADHD child with a sugar high talking about dinosaurs ; have you ever heard of a Megalodon?

This 19th century callback might just serve as a quiet reminder that there are still pockets of the internet which are written by real people. Who doesn't love a little "non-standard" literary disobedience, anyway? nothing wrong with bending a few rules.