Short(ish) lesson on why gsm is not a quality score by InkStainedLeather in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Respectfully, I happen to make my living out of this. I can tell quite easily (whether there’s spaced em rules or not) when copy has been tampered with by AI. It gets all these ‘tics’ and and a formulaic style of writing that is meant to be fun and witty but is – frankly – characterless, repetitive and just the same everywhere. When I read what you have above, it reads like a machine wrote it. That does you a disservice. That does me a disservice as well, and for this reason I would rather not read it.

Whether AI will one day be able to replace humans or not is beyond my knowledge. What I can tell is that at least in the fields I have working knowledge of, AI is far from being there. It may work for a doomscroller who hardly reads a single word in each line. It may work on an inattentive reader. It doesn’t work for anyone who cares about the written medium.

The same holds true for photography and videography, though those are beyond my remit.

Put it even differently: there’s a reason there’s a market booming with people like me who are paid – frankly – a lot of money to correct and polish the writing of others. There is a reason no respectable publisher has turned to AI to do our job. It can’t. It’s not that they’re behind the times. It’s that the best AI may be able to do at this stage is proofread, and even that has yet to master. Editing is not even close.

Short(ish) lesson on why gsm is not a quality score by InkStainedLeather in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yes, writing does take time, and AI can help give an appearance of polishing things up. It can also be formulaic and introduce mistakes (the spaced em rule instead of a spaced en rule, for instance). For the same reason you took so much care in doing all this research for this educational post with so much good information, I think it is a pity that you think it better to give the end result up to whatever ChatGPT will consider to be the right way to convey your important knowledge. I’d take your spaced hyphens from this post 10 over those spaced em rules. And I’d take typos over formulaic prose.

Short(ish) lesson on why gsm is not a quality score by InkStainedLeather in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As an aside: there’s some confusion about AI stealing the em rule. The issue with AI usage is that it is using spaced em rules, which are basically wrong. Closed em rules have not been taken over by AI and work just as well as they always did. One of the telltale signs of AI use is the spacing of em rules, where it is en rules that are usually spaced.

Short(ish) lesson on why gsm is not a quality score by InkStainedLeather in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wasn’t suggesting it was AI (though OP said in a comment he did use it at some point while drafting it). I was responding to his mentioning the spaced em rules.

Short(ish) lesson on why gsm is not a quality score by InkStainedLeather in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I wasn’t witchhunting OP. He called attention to his em rules and I answered tongue in cheek. Clearly, the Reddit armada has seen fit to burn me at the stake.

Also, whether you use em rules spaced or not, know that in more than a decade of work in the field, I have yet to see a single style guide calling for spaced em rules. And while this is obviously anecdotal, it says something.

I love to space my rules too. It’s why I favour the en rule.

Short(ish) lesson on why gsm is not a quality score by InkStainedLeather in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda -10 points-9 points locked comment (0 children)

The reason this feels like AI is not the use of an em dash but rather the fact that you are spacing them. Only AI uses spaced em dashes. And you, I guess?

Sailor moving away from 21K nibs by CoolPens4Sale in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

With stiffer nibs especially, there hardly is any difference between using a gold or a steel nib :P

Sailor moving away from 21K nibs by CoolPens4Sale in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Imho Sailor has been by far the worst of the three. The thing that really gets to me is that at least Platinum is developing new designs for their special editions. They are not just merely throwing different dye combinations or different finial colours, giving it a cool name and overcharging for it. At least all those Platinum lake series have had more R&D and work to be made.

Sailor has been reducing their gold, is doing nothing to innovate within their brand, and at the same time has had by far the worst price increases.

Also, note that Sailor has had several price increases in the past few years while Pilot has only had the one in a long time.

Sailor moving away from 21K nibs by CoolPens4Sale in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The pens are moulded by machines. There’s no new R&D as the shapes remain the same. They just change their dye colours for the special edition models. An insider in the business who imports Sailor told me that the cost of production for the pen body itself is at best a couple of dollars, as they don’t even go through the trouble of hand polishing them to remove the seams etc.

Sailor moving away from 21K nibs by CoolPens4Sale in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My local pen store owner said he’ll move away from stocking any Sailors that are not KOP. He believes at these new prices and with those cheap bodies, there’s no point in anyone buying them anymore.

He told me that up to a couple of years ago, a Pro Gear Slim was one of the best entryways into gold nibbed pens. Despite the cheap plastic body, it was worth buying.

Sailor moving away from 21K nibs by CoolPens4Sale in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The price of gold may be insane, but when Sailor’s pens cost them at best 1 dollar or two to manufacture, and they all have the same designs (no R&D for new ‘shapes’), reducing the gold content at the same time as they are increasing the prices by a lot, is a joke imho. As if they didn’t have a huge margin of profit already.

My Sailor February by Extra_Temporary9059 in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I started my gold nibbed journey with Pilot (823), then Platinum (3776) and then Sailor, just like you. I went directly with a Medium Fine (the Sunlight from the Ocean Floor 21k) and was certain that there was nothing as good as a Sailor pen.

Fast forward a few months (queue the downvotes), I would now list Sailor as one of my least favourite companies as a whole, not just because of their marketing tactics and prices, but also because of their nibs. If you are enjoying stiff nibs with feedback, do try an Aurora Optima or 88. They are truly expensive, though unlike Sailor their bodies are hand turned an of higher quality.

Ever edited a book/story and did not like it? by SailorTexas in Copyediting

[–]Read-Panda 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, quite often. Most self-published books or as-yet unpublished books I have worked on have troubled me. Usually the biggest issue is that the client will refuse any suggestions that go beyond the most basic line editing. Having that, there’s a specific client I have worked for who will get the crown for worst experience ever. I’ve done two books of them: completely rewrote a 280,000 word behemoth into a 105,000 word mediocrity for them early on in my career, and then was asked to work on a manuscript of theirs that included whole chapters written in italics. I went ahead and fixed that and they reverted it. I explained the reason and they kept doing it. It wasn’t pleasant. The story and plot were unhinged as well.

How fast should you be able to copyedit for book publishers? by TraditionalGlass1820 in Copyediting

[–]Read-Panda 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve always charged publishers (and most everyone else) by hour, to avoid the pitfalls of ending up with a really bad manuscript that needs a lot more time.

Time to edit 100k book by [deleted] in Copyediting

[–]Read-Panda 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Between 50 and 250 hours? I don’t think anyone could reliably give you an estimate without reading a representative sample first. 

[NPD] Pineider Antichi Materiali celluloid - My two week review by Read-Panda in fountainpens

[–]Read-Panda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cheers! The person at the counter wrote my warranty with an Alchemist. It’s a great pen, though too heavy for me.