To write well, you need to find the right words. But there’s a palpable difference between a word that’s almost right — serviceable but vague, directionally correct yet inexact — and one that conveys meaning with thrilling precision: what Flaubert called “le seul mot juste.”
The one right word. Flaubert’s advice: “Never settle for approximations.”
ChatGPT achieves what a thesaurus can’t: It considers the context in which a word appears, offering nuanced, pertinent suggestions to help writers articulate ideas with absolute clarity.
Here’s how former New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo uses ChatGPT for “wordfinding”:
Suddenly, we’ve got something like a jetpack to strap to our work. Sure, the jetpack is kinda buggy. Yes, sometimes it crashes and burns... But sometimes it soars, shrinking tasks that would have taken hours down to mere minutes, sometimes minutes to seconds...
Where it does really help, though, is in digging up that perfect word or phrase you’re having trouble summoning. In my jetpack metaphor up above, I’d originally written that when the jetpack is working, it “screams.” I knew “screams” wasn’t right; before ChatGPT I might have used a thesaurus or just pounded my head on the wall until the right word came to me. This time I just plugged the whole paragraph into ChatGPT and asked it for alternative verbs; “soars,” its top suggestion, was just the word that had been eluding me...
I’ve spent many painful minutes of my life scouring my mind for the right word. ChatGPT is making that problem a thing of the past.
I interviewed Farhad for a guide I wrote on how professional writers are using ChatGPT, and he elaborated on how he uses ChatGPT:
“ChatGPT has become part of my workflow. Before I start writing, I sometimes have a conversation with it about the ideas I’m thinking of. It feels like brainstorming — like thinking an idea through, or thinking out loud.
I’ve also experimented with using it as my first reader. After I write a few paragraphs, I show it to ChatGPT and ask it for general criticism. Sometimes it’s pretty good. It will suggest potential counterarguments, or lead me to ideas I hadn’t thought of. It’s not the same as talking to an editor, but it’s still great to have something to bounce my thoughts off.
My top use is what I wrote about in my New York Times article, which is wordfinding. I’m constantly trying to come up with a clever way of saying something; I guess that’s what writing is.
Before ChatGPT, I’d look at dictionaries and thesauruses and go on wild-goose Google searches for the perfect word.
ChatGPT has replaced all of those for me. It’s also really helpful with analogies, metaphors, and idioms. Often I will think of half of an analogy and not be able to finish it in just the right way. Now if I want some interesting comparison but don’t know exactly the words to use, I ask it for help, and after a little back-and-forth, it helps me find the thought I’d been searching for. I’ve never used any other tool that can help with that.”
What we’re reading
This week, I was charmed by “AI Anxiety: Can writing at Harvard coexist with new technologies?” by Serena Jampel, an undergrad who contributes to Harvard Magazine.
“As a history and literature concentrator, most of my humanities courses strictly prohibit generative AI, viewing it as a shortcut that undermines learning,” Jampel writes, noting that “AI policy at the University generally appears driven by fears about cheating.”
Drawing from her experiences as a humanities student and a tutor at the Harvard Writing Center, she offers an insightful view into how the humanities are grappling with AI disruption — and concludes that, used thoughtfully, AI has the potential “to make good writers even better.”
The thrill of the hunt
I love thinking about sentences as little puzzles to solve. When have you grasped for that perfect, elusive word — with or without calling on ChatGPT as a thesaurus — and what phrasing did you finally land on?