Form Carries Care
What my wife taught me about care, writing and AI slop.
“It’s not the form that matters, it’s the content!”
I used to say this to my wife (then girlfriend) when we had an argument and I wanted to make my point.
Early in our relationship, she’d tell me the way I said things hurt her. My response was always the same: focus on what I’m saying, not how I’m saying it. I thought I was being rational, analytical, and “efficient,” since—I believed—form was decoration and content was truth.
Over the years, I realised I was wrong.
Growing as a husband and as a dad, I see it differently now, and I appreciate that form does matter! A lot.
Form is the evidence of something deeper: it’s evidence of care. Form is the texture through which meaning travels, and that texture does carry meaning too.
Writing is thinking
A colleague posted on Slack arguing that long-form writing helps remote teams think together and better collaborate. I initially resisted because it felt inefficient for someone like me, used to operating in startups where all communication is about speed, effectiveness, and cutting the b*s. Then I asked myself: why not? And started seeing the value of his main point, that writing is thinking.
Writing is the act of thinking itself, made visible to others (and to us, too).
This relationship between thinking and writing matters more than I realized because if writing is thinking, then the form of your writing reveals the quality of your thought. Rushed writing reveals rushed thinking and careless writing reveals careless thought.
And probably that’s where AI breaks down completely.
I’ve spent nearly two years experimenting with AI writing tools:
