"...as it turns out..."

Rejoice your LLM doesn't talk this way (yet)

If you are a consumer of media in the year 2025, there is a good chance in the last week you have heard or read the phrase “as it turns out” in a story or account of something. You’ll read it regularly in The New Yorker (“As it turns out, he’ll still have more immediate troubles than his unsubtly drawn sorrow…”), in the New York Post sports section (“As it turns out, it has been a turning point in the Hall of Fame coach’s first season in Queens”) and in Barack Obama’s speeches over the years (“But as it turns out, there’s nothing natural about a steady unemployment rate that leaves millions of people out of work…”).

I confess I never liked the phrase. It’s a kind of coy rhetorical device that says: “Aha! you (or I) thought this, but in fact that,” in the course of recounting events that the teller knows already. But I agree it’s super useful in creating anecdotal drama.

So I’m glad, as it turns out, that your ChatGPT or Anthropic or Gemini model will not use the phrase when writing for you. Why? Because it can’t, unless you ask it to. Notice how swiftly text is generated when you enter your prompt. You get an explanation, not a story. This is a good thing.

History and etymology

“As it turns out” is an English idiomatic expression used to indicate that something previously unknown, uncertain, or assumed differently has become clear, often in a surprising or illuminating way as a story unfolds.

Let’s take it apart grammatically. “As it turns out” functions as a dependent introductory clause (an adverbial clause) that modifies the main clause of a sentence. Its role is to provide contextual information related to the outcome or revelation indicated in the main clause. Specifically:

• “as” is a subordinating conjunction that introduces an adverbial clause of manner or comparison, suggesting equivalence, similarity, or the unfolding of an event. The “as” establishes a temporal or circumstantial relationship between the main clause and the subordinate clause it introduces. But as we will see it isn’t necessary.

• “it,” a pronoun, serves as a dummy or expletive subject. Grammatically, “it” does not refer specifically to any particular noun or antecedent but rather stands in place of the situation or events unfolding generally. (It is situational dependent without having situational awareness.)

• “turns out” is a phrasal verb (verb + particle) functioning intransitively: “turn” is the verb and “out” is a particle. Combined, the phrasal verb “turn out” means “to become known,” “to be revealed,” or “to happen in a particular way.”

When used in a sentence like “as it turns out, his Venmo is public” (when spoken, often accompanied by a hand gesture, palm upward) the phrase serves to signal a shift between expectation and reality; to introduce information that represents a factual development; to create a logical connection between previously held assumptions and newly established facts. From a transformational grammar perspective, “as it turns out” is a reduced form of the longer construction “as it turns out to be the case,” where the second half has been elided through common usage. Googling indicates that “it turns out” is a bit more common than “as it turns out.”

The root phrase “turn out” has been around for hundreds of years and was generally used in manufacturing or agricultural contexts as a synonym for “yield” or “produce.” (I have a friend who bakes artisanal sourdough loaves; she is always welcome to tell me how her loaves “turned out.”)

Only in the nineteenth century did “as it turns out,” meaning “in the manner or way things become apparent or known,” become widespread. Both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas used the phrase in their famous debates (1858), it turns out.

See what I did there? It’s a neat trick – the point is that anyone who uses “as it turns out” knows all along what is going to be revealed and when.

Isn’t it a good thing an LLM can’t do this?

You can probably understand the explosion of the phrase in the 20^th century, in the golden age of mystery radio broadcasts and serialized storytelling, and, subsequently, all over television. The phrase fits so easily, so naturally into casual narratives, explanatory sequences, and stand up comedy. By the late 20th century, “as it turns out” was a permanent part of our verbal landscape across fiction, nonfiction, journalism, podcasts, radio, and casual conversation. Joan Didion used it all the time. (Writers use it when writing about Didion.) You’ll sometimes see it twice on one page with Malcolm Gladwell. You’ll hear it all the time on Ira Glass. It’s everywhere on NBC’s Dateline and CBS’s 48 Hours. Tons of poetry; here’s Billy Collins. And the 2005 A.S. Kline translation of Horace’s Satires even uses it (Horace did not).

The immanent click-baitiness of the phrase has made it perfect for internet writing in the 21^st century, not to mention social media.

Enter AI

And now the AI era. We know that LLM training data encompasses a vast, semi-curated collection of publicly available books, articles, websites, academic papers, movie and television scripts and all manner of written materials. Obviously “as it turns out” appears frequently and LLMs can “understand” its usage, nuances, contexts, and rhetorical implications.

Yet your LLM will not use “as it turns out” unless asked because the default generation style is geared to immediacy as well as analytical clarity, concision, neutrality, and informational precision. The point is generating formulations that are direct and precise: clear, objective explanations, rather than narrative or informal expression. If prompted explicitly your LLM can incorporate the phrase but it won’t be in the storytelling manner hitting the note that pivots the tale.

Claude concurs that it doesn’t typically use the phrase for these reasons – it aims for precision and clarity without transitional crutches that don’t add substantial meaning. It prefers a formal to a conversational tone and a kind of efficiency that isn’t about revealing data over time; it prefers facts, analyses, and conclusions. Most importantly, Claude tells me:

The phrase can introduce an element of surprise or revelation that might not be appropriate for straightforward information delivery. It implies that what follows is unexpected or contrary to initial assumptions, which could potentially undermine the clarity and directness of communication.

Additionally, the phrase might inadvertently suggest that I previously held or communicated an incorrect view that I'm now correcting, which could affect the perceived reliability of the information I provide.

Smart, yes? Thank you Claude.

So what does this ubiquitous four-word phrase say about human desire for a certain kind of storytelling structure that we cling to this (seriously) unnecessary linguistic flourish? Does “as it turns out” suggest something essential about human cognition, about our tendency to process information as narrative rather than data? Is it about our constant delight in revelation? Our instinct to create and resolve tension even in the most straightforward recounting of facts?

Whatever the answer, the fact that humans use it and LLMs don’t (yet) is interesting and wonderful too. Right now AI models generate text without experiencing the pleasure of revelation or the satisfaction of planting a well-placed twist. Perhaps someday the Anthropic engineers will nudge Claude toward better mimicking our narrative instincts as well as our words. Until then I’m happy that it hews to “reliability.”

As AI increasingly permeates our information landscape, turns of phrase and rhetorical fillips are fingerprints of humanity that we should treasure. The next time you encounter “as it turns out” in an article or conversation, recognize it for what it is, both a sly transitional phrase and evidence of a distinctly human mind at work, holding back information not because it doesn’t know, but because it does, grasping the power of when and how to reveal it. As will always be the case, the weirdest part of human language will be where AI always lags behind.