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Saunders loves to parody legal language, thick with appositive commas and capitalized terms, because he understands how that junk works at cross-purposes — it’s rigidly precise but designed mainly to cover things up.

By contrast, GPT-3 has no advance knowledge about syntax: There are no human-programmed algorithms to ensure that its subjects and verbs are in agreement, or that a comma is inserted before an appositive.

The best modern sentences resemble Donne’s, with simple statements upfront, then a pileup, if need be, of clause upon appositive clause, clarifying, elaborating, potentially without cease — but casually, too, always ready to end.

She also has a notable fondness for the appositive oblique: “the animal wildness of it,” “the hot nothingness of it,” “the glorious spectacle of it,” “the rough gray infinity of it.”

We neglected to close off this appositive with a second comma.