Lions and Tigers and … AI Writing Patterns?

It's bad enough to STILL see debates on Linkedin about AI and em-dashes—but it gets worse.

Yesterday, I saw someone post an "even better AI tell." Namely: using three examples when you write a series.

She insisted that, since AI seems to prefer triads, we humans must "adjust our writing styles" to avoid series of three ... or else "deal with the consequences."

Look. Any professional writer who paid attention during freshman comp already knew about the classic writing "rule of three." We used it long before AI hit the scene. It even has its own (rather in-depth) Wikipedia page.

It makes sense that most people don't think much about the purpose behind em-dashes, or whether trios make for more memorable, satisfying, and effective series.

But just because you learn about these things from tech doesn't mean they originated with tech.

AI learns these things from us.

Everything from fairy tales to corporate slogans to comedy acts employs the rule of three. The sentence you just read did too.

It developed intuitively over centuries of oral storytelling and narrative traditions.

Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly advance human technology and understanding far beyond what we already know.

🩺 In medicine, it improves diagnostics, surgical procedures, and treatment discoveries.

⚙️ In engineering, it optimizes design, predicts maintenance intervals, and detects faults.

🔬 It will profoundly advance fields from neuroscience to materials science to genomics.

But it does not need to be the lens through which we view literally everything. Especially when it comes to profoundly human activities:

✍ How we write.
🗣️ How we communicate.
👩‍🎨 How we think, imagine, and express ourselves.

Just because AI has caught on to what every preschooler intuitively learned from Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm doesn't mean you need to toss the time-tested rule of three.

The fact that AI figured out basic principles of style does not discredit them.

AI is not your master.
It is not your writing competition.
Not something you need to study when developing your own style—whether to adopt or to avoid its patterns.

It's just a tool, guys.

An incredible, experimental, even transformative tool—but a tool nonetheless.

Your creative choices need not revolve around machines.

When it comes to human expression, learn from humanity.

Above all, your own.

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You've Got a Book in You. Let's Get it Out.