Why ChatGPT Keeps Using the Word “Surface” (And Why It’s So Annoying)

The pebble in the shoe

This is one of those things that feels too small to matter, until it does.

Everything else can be working just fine. The system. The process. The tools. You’re in a good rhythm, you’re excited to get started, and then there’s this one tiny thing that throws you off completely. That was me, a few weeks ago, heading out for a long walk with a shoe that otherwise felt perfect… except for a single pebble. Small. Inconsequential. Impossible to ignore.

That’s what the word “surface” has become for me in ChatGPT drafts lately.

It’s not that I don’t understand what it means. I do. And it’s not that the drafts are unusable, they are. But the word keeps showing up in places where it feels oddly formal, slightly abstract, and just off enough to break my flow. Once I notice it, I can’t not notice it. It pulls me out of the text every time. Break my flow moment.

This reflection sits alongside Episode 8, where I spiral (lovingly) about this one word, not because it’s evil or wrong, but because it reveals something about how these tools work, and how sensitive we are to tone when language actually matters.

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