Shady Characters advent calendar 2025: FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY
Shady Characters × Grammar Girl: a pair of podcasts for your enjoyment!
I’ve been internet acquaintances with Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl, for many years now. (We share a literary agent, in fact, which is perhaps the most New Yorker–coded thing I’ve ever typed.)
As such, I was more than happy to talk to Mignon about Face with Tears of Joy for her always fascinating podcast. That episode has been out for a couple of months now (you can find it here, on YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts), but we also recorded a bonus episode about the hoary subject of books and book history. I am happy to report that that second episode has now been published to YouTube and all of the usual places, so head over there to watch and listen. (And also to marvel at my webcam, which insisted on focusing on the bookshelves behind me rather than on my face. It has a sense of irony, at least.)
The dash for AI
There is a new AI controversy in town: chatbots are ruining the em dash.
Over the past year or so, a number of people have decided that texts created by generative AI applications contain more em dashes than might otherwise be expected. The complainants come from LinkedIn,1 Reddit,2 Instagram,3 and beyond. There’s even a thread on a forum operated by OpenAI itself,4 the company which owns ChatGPT, whose participants bemoans the bot’s excessive and apparently unstoppable use of em dashes.
A Face with Tears of Joy book launch!
Belatedly, Face with Tears of Joy is having a launch party! I’ll be at Linlithgow’s best bookshop, Far From the Madding Crowd, at 6.30pm on Wednesday October 15th for drinks, snacks, chat, and maybe even a reading from the book. The details are here, on Facebook, and you can get your complimentary ticket at the Madding Crowd website.