Practical AI Style

Dear Reader,
You and I are both here because the rules are changing. You didn’t pick up this book to learn about AI. You picked it up because your work is already being reshaped by it. AI touches nearly every interaction. Instead of looking to AI for answers, we need to set our own rules with clarity, confidence, and control.

If you’ve ever turned to The Elements of Style for clarity in writing, this book offers a way to approach AI with the same care.

We need to learn how to work with AI, to understand Who it is and What it isn’t. Practical AI Style isn’t a warning or a blind embrace. It is a guide to help AI assist and augment our skills, grounded in clear intent, consistent tone, thoughtful constraints, and alignment with our values.

Inside, you will find elements, workbooks, and exercises I have used with teams navigating this terrain, all designed to help you build your own AI Style Guide you can put to immediate use. Along the way, you will meet a few of my favorite cohorts: a race engineer, an art forger, Scheherazade, Juror #8, the Great One, and a Pope. Each offers an authentic perspective that helps shape how we approach AI with tone, judgment, assurance, and trust.

Thanks for being part of this work. With Gratitude! Mike

P.S. We likely haven’t met. I’ve spent my career where technology meets learning, helping people and teams adapt to change with clarity and care. This book was shaped by years of work with organizations, a curiosity for what comes next, and one vivacious, partially trained golden retriever named Mara, who reminds me daily how nascent intelligence does not always look or act the way we expect. I live with my wife and daughter in Hull, Massachusetts, leashed to the future five feet behind Mara.