They say do not write ‘soyabean’ as two words; do not bother about what dictionaries prescribe; do not use phrasal verbs to pep up your sentences; but use hackneyed stale expressions and long tedious sentences.
Alice never grows old. Nor is she averse to adventures. Born from the ink of Lewis Carroll in 1865, she remains in an ethereal state. Someone – perhaps Carroll himself – gives her a jab of panacea to revive her.
She, however, learns all the traits of the modern world, including how to use ChatGPT. Immediately after gaining her corpus, she shuns her traditional attires and puts on a T-shirt and jeans. Smarter, she looks. Her creator Lewis Carroll aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson wants her to enter the warren of words but says: Beware of Queen Red and her Big Brother! Alice enters the warren.
A little confused, she presses the button of ChatGPT to search for the right way to reach her destination – the palace of Queen Red.
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Suddenly, she looks behind and finds a poster portraying two huge faces – one that of Queen Red and another of her Big Brother. Under the photographs, runs a caption: Beware! We are Watching You!
Don't write what queen cannot understand!
ChatGPT says, “Big Brother is the brainchild of Eric Arthur Blair. Surprised? Blair is none but George Orwell, author of 1984.”
A chatterbox as Alice is, she finds speaking banned in the warren. Another billboard comes up, screaming: “You are not supposed to write or utter anything that Queen Red and her Big Brother do not understand. What they do not appreciate, others cannot.”
She says to herself, “Gibberish! Did they study other people's mind?”
Someone whispers into her ears: “You are not supposed to question. True, what they cannot understand cannot be understood. If they write, ‘soyabean’ as one word you must. It does not matter if the dictionaries use it as two words.”
Another poster appears with a caption beneath it: “Do not write ‘on the lam’ instead of ‘on the run’, ‘escape’, ‘run away’, and ‘decamp’. Even if you have used ‘on the run ten times,’ you must not worry, as readers cannot understand any other phrases.”
Alice says to herself, “An apt expression, though new at times, is peppy.”
Why do you suppress freedom of expression?
She meets Queen Red and her Big Brother. But even after 159 years, Queen Red has not changed her traditional attires. So does Big Brother. He is in his unique tunic. His red eyes and stony face generate fear, but Alice is different.
She bombards both with questions: “Why do you suppress freedom of expression by not allowing an author to write a few expressions?”
This enraged Big Brother who says, “You are in a different world. No living being can understand what we cannot.”
Alice says, “I agree. But sentences should be short, crisp, and grammatically correct. A few phrases are needed to energise it. Do readers appreciate stale expressions and long sentences?”
Alice begins to read an intro of a news story: “Given its rather envious position, India – with its expanding strategic relations with the US, on one hand, and the pragmatic ties with Russia, on the other – seems to have become a sounding board for ending the conflict in Ukraine.”
She says, “If you think your readers welcome such a tedious sentence, the expressions I have mentioned will not ring outlandish to them.”
Alice reads again: ‘The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has invoked the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita sections 112 (2) pertaining to petty organised crimes and 61 (2) for criminal conspiracy against the five accused persons arrested in connection with the illegal telephone exchange busted at an apartment in Kondhwa area of Pune city.”
Alice Liddell: A rebellious daughter of Henry Liddell
As Alice is not accustomed to such a sentence, she takes a breath and says, “Do your readers appreciate such a sentence?”
Queen Red says, “Alice, you are becoming too big for your boots. You have words like bizarre, surprising, shocking, magnific, and rattling to pep up your sentences. You must use them thousands of times a day. Now stop! Else, you will be imprisoned!”
She then remembers Lewis who carolled: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
Alice says, “You cannot do so. I am Alice Liddell, rebellious daughter of Henry Liddell and the pen picture of Lewis Carroll, but I been in a state of zero since November 16, 1934; today, I am what I might have been – a dream.” Her corpus slowly fades into nothingness.
