Farewell, “Whilst” - Notes from a Midlife Linguistic Identity Crisis
When AI detectors and Guardian commenters come for your favourite conjunction, what’s a girl to do?
Whilst passing some writing through the obligatory AI-bot detector required for academic integrity, I was horrified to discover that I’d been pinged as having used AI - spoiler alert: I hadn’t.
On closer inspection, it became clear that the offending culprits were the use of the words “embodied” and “whilst”. Now “embodied” is tricky to avoid when you’re writing about, well, embodied simulation. But “whilst”? Say it isn’t so!
I have been blithely tossing “whilst” into my writing for many years. But alas, its days of describing contrast are numbered. A recent foray into a Guardian discussion board revealed that using “whilst” apparently marks me out as either a poor academic writer, someone from the Midlands, or a bit of a snob, all of which, on any given day, may very well be true.
So farewell, “whilst”, and welcome “while” - at least for a while.
Now, that’s really put the cat amongst the pigeons - or is it among?