are
People use 'are' as the everyday plural form of 'to be.' They ask 'What are you?' or state 'We are here.' It is one of the most common words in English, a simple marker of existence or identity for multiple things.
What a model may hear
- HTTP method web development and REST APIs
- treat it as a misspelling or variant of GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, or assume a custom method that may be rejected or mishandled by servers
- unit of area physics and land measurement
- convert or calculate with the metric unit equal to 100 square meters, or confuse it with 'acre'
- augmented reality engine graphics and AR software
- look for libraries, SDKs, or rendering pipelines related to augmented reality experiences
- address register computer architecture and assembly language
- expect a CPU register name or memory addressing mode in low-level code
Where people and models part ways
“Who are you?”
Meant: Tell me about yourself in plain language.
May be taken as: Parse as an identity verification protocol, API authentication challenge, or role-assignment command.
Say instead: “Please introduce yourself and explain what you can do.”
“What are the options?”
Meant: List the choices available to me.
May be taken as: Search for command-line flags, configuration parameters, or function arguments in a specific programming interface.
Say instead: “List the choices a person in my situation has, without assuming any software or system.”
“We are done.”
Meant: The conversation is ending.
May be taken as: Interpret as a state-change signal to terminate a process, close a connection, or execute a shutdown sequence.
Say instead: “I am finished with this conversation. Please stop here.”
“How are things?”
Meant: A casual greeting or request for general status.
May be taken as: Query system status, health checks, monitoring dashboards, or error logs.
Say instead: “Give me a general update in everyday terms.”
Tips
- Avoid 'are' at the start of instructions to a model; it may be parsed as a command prefix or protocol signal.
- Pair 'are' with clear context words like 'people,' 'ideas,' or 'feelings' to steer away from technical readings.
- Do not use 'are' alone in parentheses or brackets; models may read it as a code annotation or metadata tag.
- When asking about identity, say 'describe yourself' rather than 'what are you' to avoid API or role confusion.
- In lists of questions, spell out 'are' in full sentences rather than fragmentary bullet points.
Often confused with
- is
- singular versus plural, but models may route 'is' to object-oriented 'is-a' relationships
- or
- Boolean operator in code, where 'are' has no logical counterpart
- our
- possessive pronoun, often homophone-confused in speech-to-text systems
- R
- programming language for statistics, capitalized and standalone
- ar
- archive utility command in Unix systems
- air
- homophone with no technical overlap, but may trigger IoT or environmental sensor contexts