Melissa Harris (BSJ02)

Melissa Harris is co-author of the new book “Everybody Needs an Editor: The Essential Guide to Clear and Effective Writing,” written with Jenn Bane and edited by Mark Jacob. The book, published by Simon Element, is a guide for contemporary times, advising readers how to use ChatGPT without sacrificing their humanity, how to write emails that will actually get opened, and how to deliver a presentation that will keep colleagues off their phones.

One of the key points in the book is that Artificial Intelligence doesn’t mean people can stop worrying about the quality of their writing. It actually means the opposite – people must write extremely well to stand out from the crowd. And if they use AI, they have to know how to edit it to avoid disaster.

The book is fun to read – not at all preachy. As Publishers Weekly put it: “The authors can be delightfully snarky, such as when they caution against turning nouns into verbs and ridicule a job posting that used ‘laddering’ as a verb: ‘Garage the laddering. Unless you need to reach a kitten who is treeing.’”