AI is my proofreader

AI Helping Out

For the past four months, I have utilised AI to review, assess, and suggest new ideas after reading the blog. Its purpose is to make spelling and grammatical changes without changing the structure of the blog, if my voice is to be lost in the process.

The result of that activity is in this published blog - You Are the Boss

The bot or agent within the Poe app does the following, using Claude-Sonnet-4.5 as the AI modelling tool. Here is the link to my Blog-Reviewer-Editor. You can have a trial and let me know what you think.

The Bot Introduction

Blog Reviewer Editor Polisher - UK English

### What This Bot Does

This specialised assistant helps polish and refine blog posts whilst preserving your unique voice and writing style. It functions as a professional British English editor that grammatically reviews your content, corrects errors, and improves readability without losing the essence of your original work.

## Key Facilities

# Grammar and punctuation correction using British English conventions

# Flow and readability improvements through sentence restructuring and better transitions

# Section headings introduced to improve readability, where there are none in the text

# Style preservation, ensuring you still recognise your own voice and thought processes

# Comprehensive review summary explaining what changed and why

# Writing feedback offering insights on how to improve future posts

# Headline suggestions with reasoned recommendations

# Discourse analysis identifying potential debate angles and alternative perspectives

## Benefits

# Maintains your authentic voice whilst achieving professional polish

# Ensures consistent British English spelling and conventions throughout

# Eliminates grammar errors without over-editing or changing your message

# Improves clarity and comprehension for readers

# Provides educational feedback to develop your writing skills

# Saves time by handling technical editing whilst you focus on ideas

# Offers strategic insights for developing related content

## Considerations

# No em-dashes policy: The bot strictly avoids em-dashes, replacing them with alternative punctuation

# Context preservation: Edits prioritise maintaining your original meaning over stylistic perfection

# No new content: The bot won't add ideas not present in your original text

# British English only: All spelling and conventions follow British standards

# Voice over perfection: When in doubt, the bot chooses preserving your voice over technically 'perfect' alternatives

## Simply paste your blog post, and receive a polished version along with constructive feedback for continuous improvement.

Uses Claude-Sonnet-4.5, a model that is powered by Anthropic.

AI Review Summary

Changes Made and Why

1. Section headings added: I've introduced four section headings to guide readers through your narrative arc: arrival and gratitude, the measurements, waiting room observations, and the consultation itself.
2. Punctuation corrections:
• Changed "checkup" to "check-up" (British convention for this medical term)
• Added necessary commas for clarity ("In fact, her uniform...")
• Improved the flow of complex sentences with better comma placement
3. Spelling corrections:
• "practiced" → "practised" (British English for the verb form)
• "6-month" → "six-month" (convention to spell out numbers at the beginning of compound adjectives)
4. Sentence restructuring:
• Split overly long sentences where they impeded readability
• Used semicolons to balance related clauses (e.g., the worn shoe observation)
• Added em-dash replacements with commas and semicolons as per your guidelines
5. Minor word adjustments:
• "nurse phlebotomist" rather than "nurse at phlebotomist" for professional title accuracy
• Adjusted punctuation in the final sentence for better rhythm

Writing Insights

Your writing has a distinctive, observational quality that blends personal health concerns with social commentary. The shift from self-focused anxiety to broader observations about others shows good narrative awareness. However, some sentences tried to carry too much weight simultaneously, which occasionally obscured your points.

Areas for improvement:

• Watch for run-on sentences that pack multiple observations into one clause
• Consider whether comparative observations (like the nurse's weight) serve your narrative purpose or risk distracting from your main point
• Your philosophical asides are engaging, but ensure they're integrated smoothly rather than interrupting the flow

Subject and Discourse

This piece touches on several rich themes:

Healthcare experience: The patient-consultant relationship, medical autonomy, and the evolution of medical paternalism towards shared decision-making

Body image and health: Your self-consciousness about measurements alongside observations of healthcare workers' own health creates an interesting tension about who has authority over health

Potential debate lines:

• Medical autonomy vs medical expertise: When should patients override professional advice?
• The health of healthcare workers: Should there be fitness standards for medical professionals?
• Anxiety and medical appointments: How does anticipatory stress affect health readings?

Alternative angles to explore:

• The ten-year relationship with your consultant and what continuity of care means
• Why biannual check-ups matter for chronic condition management
• The irony of seeking health in institutions where health workers themselves struggle

Suggested Headlines

1. "You Are the Boss" - This quote captures the heart of your piece: medical autonomy and the evolving doctor-patient relationship. It's intriguing and invites readers in.
2. "Observations from the Waiting Room" - Emphasises your contemplative, observational style and the social commentary aspect of your writing.
3. "A Decade of Check-ups" - Highlights the long-term nature of your medical journey and suggests reflection and perspective.
4. "Grateful for Good Health" - Takes your closing sentiment and makes it the headline, creating a positive, reflective tone that frames the entire piece.
5. "The Daily Struggle for Health" - Uses your own phrase about the universal challenge of maintaining health, applicable to patients and healthcare workers alike.

Recommendation: I'd suggest "You Are the Boss" as your headline. It's memorable, creates intrigue, and captures the key moment of medical autonomy that seems central to your reflection. It also invites debate about patient rights and medical decision-making.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Thought Picnic: In writing to get it right

Writing to a sort

Sometimes I wonder if I would successfully fill a month with its daily quota of blogs as both the exercise of discipline and the demonstration of consistency that I occasionally fail to achieve. It is not for the want of determination or the absence of material to write about, the unintended along with the unexplained just seems to invade the appearance of order leaving one thinking things are spiralling out of control.

Then you assess the point of necessity, for none of this is done under any duress, it is just the willingness to act and the preparedness the perform that dictates the frequency or the lack of it. I enjoy this activity and it is not done for the purpose of monetisation as I was asked of recently. I guess when that comes to mind, you acquire both duty and responsibility with the pressure that could portend avoidable anxiety.

Remember to relax and learn

If the themes of some recent blogs are anything to go by, the circumstances I create for myself are ones in which I seek to thrive rather than suffer. Even when I consider the idea of resting on laurels of blogging for almost 18 years, I am no less enthusiastic about blogging which ranges over a broad spectrum of the serious to the unserious, opinions that I once spelt opinono in a primary school spelling test, perspectives, experiences, and reports.

What surprises me as I write is the things I remember, it is like an active archiving and searching operation is going on in my brain and there to type out at this moment are times when I did not know how to pronounce bronchitis, yacht, quay, beau, or Islington, and then I knew. The blog presents opportunities for learning and learning afresh. Now, what did I start this blog for?

Bullshit! Shit is living

Learning on the job

When I write, I have both the Microsoft Word spellchecker and grammar checker active to catch the basic errors or highlight something I might need to review or on my own good judgement ignore. Then when I paste my copy in the blog editor, Grammarly tackles some context, the punctuation, number agreement but shies away from political correctness.

I have not set the grammar checking rules to a stringent adherence to Victorian style or James I prose, nor do I aspire to Shakespearean flourish. In a way, I think I have my unique way of using words, constructing sentences, and conveying my opinions.

There is no doubt that I still have a lot to learn, it is an ongoing activity of self-development. Obviously, I deviate from formality to levity, abuse structure for artistic license, I will try to explain the jargon, whilst attempting to avoid neologisms, the occasional colloquialism or is it expletive will surface and that without apology.

The bull always shits

This is because, there is no better word for it and when in my last blog the grammar checker went after BULLSHIT, I retorted with Bullshit! Yes, whilst there are uses for the shit of bulls as manure, it is what they naturally do like we all do, we shit and it is as much proof that we are living things and much as we breathe. A characteristic we cannot do without, else we are on to constipation and without prompt relief death.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Killing their people with incompetence

The Cambridge Dictionary defines bullshit in usage as both an exclamation and a noun and as; thus, complete nonsense or something that is not true. Pardon me, it is apparently offensive too. I guess it is one of those times when the shit hits the fan and the fan splats the shit on anyone who has not already taken refuge under a table.

“This language might be offensive to your reader.” Screams the grammar checker. It’s my blog and dear reader if you have never had to look back in anger at the water closet, your immortality is secure. Let’s stop feigning disgust, shitting is life and life is shitting.

Bullshit highlighter.

Excoriating the unacceptable in written English communication

Rotten text English

I happened upon a posting on Facebook where the writer in expressing disapproval of the content of an email he received, posted the text stating the sender was a graduate of an unnamed university and the person had been previously warned about writing in that manner.

The email contained a greeting, lots of bad punctuation, misspelt words and bad grammar forming the basis for a request along of the lines of being engaged for some project by the recipient of the email.

Social Media is hardly the problem

The comments that followed the posting gave a general idea of what people might think of such communication that I was compelled to add an opinion that I have expanded into the blog below.

The first comment, suggested this was what you get for spending so much time on Social Media, however, I begged to differ with the this statement - I do not think the excuse is time spent on Social Media, I come from the telegram generation where words cost a lot of money and we did not succumb to such sloppiness.

Adapt to the platform

In fact, with the advent of Short Message Service (SMS) on mobile phones restricted to 160 characters and now tweets on Twitter restricted to 140 characters, the need to be correct, concise and clear should not be sacrificed to this nonsensical mode of communication.

Now, the use of phonetic spellings, homophones, abbreviations and words missing their vowels are becoming the standard mode of communication amongst many. In fact, if this were used as personal shorthand to be transcribed to proper text for public dissemination, I would have no problem with it.

I have had instances where visiting another country, the need for sentences to be properly formed and written is essential for the use of an online translator, if people speaking different languages need to communicate – this kind of writing using strange words does not help.

No excuses

Another comment asked if the person were a possible hire; unlikely, would be the response. We must not confuse this lack of attention to language communication with dyslexia; this fad has crept from informal communication into formal letters, the writers being none the wiser about how this reflects on them and their prospects.

There is no excuse for writing English letters this way, most especially in emails or on Facebook, where there is enough space and spellcheckers are available to ensure good and correct spelling. Besides, to ignore such promptings to spell correctly is both reckless and irresponsible, such stubborn use of unconventional text should be penalised.

Call me old-fashioned but communication between animals if they had script would never be reduced to this.

Standards in written language communication matter

Other comments followed from absolving the writer from any blame to asking the recipient to be more amenable to such faddish style of writing. I guess this represents how many feel about this, but if we should maintain standards; that includes everyone, and dictionaries are not to become a compendium of a jumble of letters given any meanings suited to the times, some of us have to decide what is acceptable and what is not.

On this occasion, I suggested the writer needs a stern telling off for today, just in case the person encounters a less forgiving person on matters that concern opportunity and prospect after this.

I am probably a purist of sorts, I make mistakes, but I strive to ensure that I use dictionary reviewable words of the language of choice when communicating with people. I have lapsed into sesquipedalianism at times, but that is to maintain context and carry a message.

When it comes to Twitter, I have learnt brevity, concision and precision is possible with the use of correct English grammar and proper English words in the limited space of 140 characters – I believe, there are no excuses for sloppy writing, regardless of the platform.

Official Scrabble loses to Collins Scramble Allwords

Games for a child

I think I have been playing Scrabble for about 32 years, my uncle has just returned from the UK and he brought us a few board games, Scrabble and Monopoly.

Thankfully, I lived in a home where my parents had a sense of fun, whilst my mother sometimes wanted me to revise my schoolwork, what I learnt in class was enough to get me a good examination result – I am glad they exhibited a keen interest in a lively childhood than many typical Nigerian parents afforded their children.

I do remember that my mother spent her salary raise given in the Udoji review on buying my first bicycle.

The Scrabble lifestyle

In any case, Scrabble became the social ice-breaker, you made friends through battles on the board, in school competitions you won prizes and even played for money.

I am sorry to say, it was not designed for the dyslexic, you had to be able to spell right and if you didn’t, you hoped that your opponent(s) were unaware and you took away the spoils with high scores.

Obscure words, smart placings, multiple words on premium squares and everyone wanted to take you on to serve you a whopping defeat only for you to triumph.

The rules are clear, some house rules too like – timed turns, tiles placed on board must form part of the word for that turn, reusable blanks – anything to give the game a bit of excitement.

The matured player always played within the extents of the dictionary used to adjudge the words spelt out on board, in many cases it was the Chambers’ Twentieth Century English dictionary until we got hold of the Original Scrabble Words where two-letter word plays might just have you storming off in a tirade of four-letter expletives with the confirmation of the four-letter word – lost – as your gift.

No rules for fools

Rules are there for a purpose, any game without rules is a riot, a barbarian’s orgy, a lascivious bounty of reckless abandon to which there can be no restraint.

The news today [1] should have arrived 5 days earlier on April the first when Mattel the copyright holder of Scrabble announced a rules change which was not tactical or functional but just a typical lapse to invite stupidity into the pretence of being erudite, to "introduce an element of popular culture into the game", they said with vacuous glee.

Proper nouns would be allowed – this would include names of places, people, companies or brands – whilst it is not a free for all since it would be restricted to a Collins dictionary word list; woe betide the place, person, company or brand who has not seen the business and competitive opportunity of being able to brag about being a new Scrabble word.

Brand your game

Honestly, that rule change creates another game that could better be distinguished as Scramble as the fashion victims with their trousers halfway down their legs jive with Burberry as chavs, drinking Courvoisier with their LV caps and Gucci teeth wearing a mix-and-match of Crocs on one foot and Jimmy Choo’s on the other – all legitimate words of Scramble.

Only Scramble can best describe this change as a sense of chaos, disorder, the lack of rules and a riot of meaningless jumbles of letter arrangements that would be comfortable in, well, the game Scramble.

To call this game Scrabble would be sacrilegious to the extreme, tantamount to having the players of a typical game of football carry the ball with hands into the net and being able to score in any net for your team – ditch the goalkeepers, they are useless.

Maybe chess might also consider a rule chance, pawns can move in any direction regardless of where they are on the board and the king does no have to bother about being in check.

There is a wisdom that followed the time-honoured rules of Scrabble, just as constutions do not get changed on a whim – those rules have stood the test of time.

Just imagine how cross I would be because my village Ijesha-Ijebu does not appear in Collins Scramble Allwords and Walsall where I was born does, the hyphen is immaterial was we flip the board in unsettled dispute and depart in disgust.

Your name is not in the book of …

There might be the case for discrimination for including certain names and not others because they are Anglophile but Sinophile, Arabic, Asian or African names receive no prominence in the new hegemony of games, gamesmanship and an incipient preponderance of inferiority over those not blessed to be counted amongst the chosen,

No book will be big enough to contain all legitimate names in the whole wide world just because some smart chap thought that was a market for idiots to play Scrabble rather than their consoles.

For once, I wish I were a lawyer; I would be at the forefront of a class action suit and sue the pants off Mattel for this inane insight of faddism that leaves a majority of the global community that is their market place out of the exclusive Collins Scramble Allwords – Oh! Deliver us from this travesty.

I will be back on the matter, I am not finished yet.

* Since Scramble seems to be taken, a synonym might well do like scamper, scuffle or scurry but NOT Scrabble.

Source

[1] BBC News - Proper nouns come into play in Scrabble rule change

Rough Spelling Though Thought Tough Enough

The three Arrrrghs!

Every once in a while, an academic at the height of his powers and erudite mien decides to counteract very good tenet and principle learnt over years of earning respect and accolades to hog the newswires.

When I went to Corona School, Bukuru, Jos, the curriculum was very strong in the so-called 3-Rs [1] which rightfully or wrongfully was the acronym for Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic.

There are many times I did wonder where write required a W when right and rite which all sound alike could live without it. Maybe the answer should have been closer to ansa, but that would have been the wrong answer.

Reading and writing

In what would be a luxury today, once a week, I had 30 minutes in a one-on-one session with my teacher where all I did was read aloud to her and she helped me with the intonation, accent, context and comprehension – it just made reading alone more fun afterwards because you learnt just how words work together.

I never really did like writing at all, and even though I write a lot in blogging, my system (me as opposed to my computer) sometimes seizes up with writer’s-block and my rather over-active mind churns with ideas that probably would get expressed if there was a way to link my mind to the autocue of a keyboard allowing me to read my mind on screen.

Spelling opinono

Twice a week, we had spelling classes and I do remember spelling opinion opinono, but spelling classes were easy on the teacher, we did 10 words, exchanged our work with other classmates and we were marked and scored by our peers.

You just had to know how to spell no matter how irregular the word, because spelling words right are the foundation to good communication – living the Netherlands has even made me a bit more purist about correct spelling which in my book is English spelling as in what is spoken in England (Britain).

I think I am allowed to use English in the general context of English spoken in the United Kingdom because when I was learning German some 9 years ago, the course clearly differentiated between English and Americanisch, which we took to be American English.

I like my U in colour, I like the ae in encyclopaedia, the Z must not replace the S in organisation, recognise and sympathise, basically, like I learnt in German, some words are just the way they are, you should learn the gender or article with the words and then you would have no problems.

Catching you out

So we have with English where it is not necessarily a phonetically-sensitive language but it separates the men from the boys especially in names and places.

Islington does not start off like Island, Leicester is Lester, Southwark is Sudork, Greenwich is Grenitch, Southern does not start off with South but is Surthern, Featherstonehaughs is Fanshaws, Menzies is Mingies, Magdalene [2] sounds as it is as in Mary Magdalene but becomes Maudlin for the college at the University of Cambridge and so on and so forth.

So, imagine my chagrin when a so-called Emeritus Professor of Phonetics who happens to be the President of Spelling Society suggests [3] that give should become giv and river should become river and we go down the zeeeee lane by dropping the S for the Z and embrace Americanisms. If this is a sop to dyslexia, well, just imagine that the word that pertains to people who cannot spell correctly is as difficult as you can get it.

I am beside myself with apoplectic rage and I would have felt less so if this came from a non-native English speaker who had not spent a lifetime giving English its essence, quality, timbre and mystique, if it ever had that status.

To the stake with the heretic

But I would not be perturbed if I can be the first to light the fire, because the Economist last week helped bring a clear perspective to this matter when introduced the issue of Czech scepticism to Europe [4] with these lines.

Throughout history, heretics have faced unusually horrid punishments—and it is no mystery why. Most faith-based systems can withstand the threat from non-believers, sinners and the like. But heretics are a menace from within: dissenting believers, who question key articles of faith. [4]

Indeed, I can withstand all the talk about putting milk in my tea, driving on the left, liking roast beef and spelling words in peculiar ways from foreigners, I would not however brook the idea of a priest of church of English spelling and expression questioning those articles of faith in the uniqueness of English as a medium of communication as we have it today.

Light the fire now

This suggestion makes Professor John Wells a heretic, a menace from within, probably worthy of ex-communication from English as a means of expression but better still, he should be burnt at the proverbial stake like the heretics of old.

Maybe we can make him recant by putting him in a dunking stool [5], but at his position, the great commission to keep English English would have failed if he were allowed to support these views with more commentary and airing as to create a following.

But just when I set fire to the stake and had the mob chanting heretic to the death, a comment showed up that pooh-poohed the whole idea of spelling – it would appear my word processor would have a heart attack after this – I was surprised how easy it was to read, probably making nonsense of my hysterical histrionics about spelling.

Beyond spelling

The discourse does go beyond spelling, to expression, use of language, punctuation, nuance and so on, I am no professor and I intend to keep the faith.

Courtesy of Ice Ko who placed this comment in the news story alluded to in the Daily Telegraph [3], just see how easy it is to read this:

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rseereachr at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are. The olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? And I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was so ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs, it srue anit!

Sources

[1] The three Rs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Maudlin or Magdalen? - This is Oxfordshire.co.uk

[3] Irregular English spelling should be scrapped, says leading academic - Telegraph

[4] Charlemagne | The heretical Czechs | Economist.com

[5] Common scold (Dunking Stool) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

O'Bama - Osama - Oh Bummer - Obama

Where’s Obama?

Sometimes, one has to resist the temptation to keep an open mind about an issue and nowhere is this most pertinent when innocuous spelling errors convey a radically different meaning from the main import.

This comes about in the light of the apology that CNN has issued during a programme hosted by Wolf Blitzer where a caption "Where's Obama?" appeared with Osama bin Laden being pictured.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars.com

Obama happens to be the surname of the photogenic Afro-American senator who seems to be a promising prospect for US presidency probably 8 to 12 years from now, in my reckoning. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.

It smacks of rank sloppiness to have had a typographical error on names so prominent especially one that seems juxtapose “America’s most wanted man” with “America’s most promising future president”.

We are continually told that Osama bin Laden is the “World’s most wanted man”, I think not. China, India, Nigeria, Brazil and Russia have significant populations and there is no reason to desire the man for anything, America was the most affected by his atrocities, we should put that in context.

Names of the immigrants

However, for a country that was built and exists as land of immigrants, the time has passed when immigrants who moved to the US anglicised their names to appear conformed and integrated.

Time and again, we see names like Milorad Blagojevich, the governor of the state of Illinois or the popular California governor, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, a former president Eisenhower and even the culprit Wolf Blitzer where Wolf is probably a contraction of Wolfgang – all hardly native American – but no one exerts pressure on them to recode their names for simplification.

Oh Lordy, O’Bama

Senator Barrack Obama has however suffered much for his name, I remember the Economist suggesting before he was elected that he might be more electable as O'Bama – balderdash!

Our names are our identities, no matter how tongue-twistingly impossible they might be to others, there is no valid reason to adopt some alien pseudonym in craving acceptance, if your personality and quality of character shines through, people would endeavour to get your name as correct as they dare to.

From a more sinister perspective, this slip might have been a deliberate effort to denigrate Senator Obama, having created an image that exemplifies the revulsion of terror when America was almost brought to its knees – there should be much that CNN should be sorry for – this is the kind of thing as one commentator said would be seen on FOX News, well, we have just reached a new low point in reckless journalism.

The errors of our constitution

This reminds me of an episode in 1984 when I was the student representative of the EE II constituency in the Yaba College of Technology. I had obtained a copy of the Students Union constitution just at the time that the newly elected president, Kola Oladoja offered to make copies of the constitution for the members of the House.

When that constitution arrived, it contained 47 major errors which made it look like a rewrite of the constitution without following due process.

I was livid with rage that an elected official who had sworn to protect the constitution now seemed to have created his own constitution and I moved a motion to first pulp the material and then discipline the president, unfortunately, the officials of the house did not seem to realise the gravity of this offence.

Negating the context

In the 28 spelling errors, there were sentences like, “The official shall resent …” when it should be “The official shall present …”, the use of may when it should be must, perceive for receive – very much negating context, such that officers could not be brought to account on many pertinent issues.

This failure to deal with the breach of trust and confidence because of the unusual popularity of the President of the Students Union lead to a situation many months after when leading a student protest on the campus, the crowd lost discipline and grew riotous damaging campus property that the college was closed for months.

Our lesson

The fallout included many of us vocal political voices repeating years study which for me came to nought, the president himself was rusticated and it was rumoured that he probably came to an untimely end.

This, all because we did not have the guts to challenge the errors in our constitution, which should have lead to the instant impeachment of the president.

No, I do not take these errors lightly, and the one against Senator Obama is a slight almost unforgivable.