Editing

Editing is the part of the writing process where you check and refine how well you have communicated your ideas to your reader. This involves looking at multiple aspects of your work, including the structure, criticality and writing style.

At this stage, it's likely you've spent a lot of time with your draft and are probably feeling too 'close' to it to get a true sense of where improvements need to be made. It may, therefore, be tempting to put your draft into a Generative AI tool and ask it for advice. However, this may not always be beneficial as it can lead to assessment irregularities and/or poorer quality work depending on what you ask for help with and how you apply the advice given. Therefore, it's important to take some time to think about how you might use AI as an effective digital assistant in the editing process.

Using AI to decode and apply feedback

A great starting point for editing your work is to look at previous feedback you’ve been given, this helps you establish what you’ve done well, but also what types of errors and mistakes you tend to make in your work. AI can help pull your feedback together, so you have a clearer sense of what to look out for in your work.

AI  can help you in ‘translating’ your feedback into concrete actions.

If you have lots of feedback and you’re struggling to see any helpful advice in it, a generative AI tool can help you identify the patterns you need to see. You can then work to address these concerns yourself.

In addition, it’s difficult to be objective about any feedback we receive. We often only use feedback to confirm our existing beliefs, and it can feel like a judgement of us, rather than an appraisal of our work. An AI tool can identify trends/patterns without being clouded by the emotional responses that feedback often provokes.

There are some sample prompts which can help you with this process 

Sample prompts for lengthy or confusing feedback:

Step 1:

I am going to copy and paste my feedback from 3 assignments. Please summarise the main points this feedback makes about the following features: writing style /structure / critical skills / argument / flow / references / [other thing of your choice].

Step 2:

Please generate a list of actions / list of editing tasks / writing prompts I could use to address these concerns. Format the list in bullet points and give examples for each item.

Prompts for unhelpfully short or terse feedback:

Please generate 4 hypothetical scenarios that would lead a person to give this feedback on a piece of academic writing: [paste your feedback]

Imagine you have given someone the following feedback on a piece of academic work: [paste your feedback]. Write them a five-step editing action plan to help them address your concerns. Use clear, straightforward language and give examples for each step.”

Editing and proofreading your work

AI can be a useful tool to help you check and edit your work while developing your skills as a writer. When using AI tools, it is important that you review any outputs provided to ensure that suggestions made do not change your work so significantly that it is no longer your own, which is academic misconduct.

There are different levels of errors and mistakes typically found in writing, these are useful to consider when and if you decide to use AI to help proofread and edit your work. For issues with content and meaning, outsourcing to AI should be avoided as your ideas/meaning can be lost.

Level 1 errors	Typing errors, inconsistencies, omitted elements, adherence to house style
Level 2 mistakes	Spelling, grammar, punctuation and inappropriate word choice
Level 3 academic style	Inappropriate register, lack of cohesion, poor expression, unclear meaning, issues with structure
Level 4 content and meaning	Accurate interpretation of sources, content and meaning, missing content, missing references, plagiarism, quality of discussion, meeting aims/marking criteria.

Proofreading with AI

Level 1 errors

You can ask AI to check for and correct errors you’ve made with typing and inconsistences, for example, labels for figures by inputting a prompt such as:

Can you check this piece of work to ensure that all figures/tables/charts have a label or legend?

Can you check this work for the phrase X?

Changes such as these, tend not to significantly change the meaning of your work, so it is appropriate to use AI in this context. However, to develop your learning, you can ask AI to identify these types of errors, and you can correct them yourself.

Level 2 mistakes (language competence)

You’ll find some AI tools such as Grammarly offer layers of proof-reading and editing support, spelling and grammatical issues such as verb formation, subject verb matching generally can be corrected using AI tools, if they do not alter the meaning of the text, however, in some cases, grammatical errors can change the meaning of a text for example, the position of commas or choice of words.

Therefore, a more effective method to use AI is to identify these errors initially, and seek explanations for why they are incorrect, and you can decide to change them if required.

For example:

Can you identify any incomplete sentences in this text and explain why they might not make sense to the reader?

You can also check for punctuation, for example

Can you check this text for comma use?

Once you get output, you can further prompt why commas have been added in certain sentences, this not only informs you of comma use in context but also allows you to make an informed choice.

If you aren’t sure of a particular word, or level of formality AI can also help with this

Are there any synonyms for (X) that would work better in this context?

Can you suggest a more formal word to replace (X)?

You should check the outcome to make sure that what has been provided is appropriate to your context, AI will not be able to take into account subject nuances and expectations.

Copy editing your work can mean quite substantial changes to the style and content and you have to be cautious about using AI

Level 3 academic style

AI can be used to help you with the style of your work, for example if you are concerned that you may have used informal expressions or that you have used quite wordy sentences and language. Different subjects may have different conventions and expectations, unless you feed this into prompts and follow up questions, you can’t assume that Gen AI will have this knowledge in its dataset.

For example,

In my education module we have been told to avoid the use of the phrase X, can you check if I have used it?

If you feel that you are being repetitive, AI can highlight where you have done this in the text,

Can you please highlight all the instances where I have referred to theory X?

However, you need to decide if in the context you have written, this is appropriate or not. If it is AI can help you rephrase

Can you suggest an alternative phrase to X ?

You could also prompt with a specific sentence or section and ask follow- up prompts

Is there a more concise way to express this idea?

AI can generate models, where you can compare your work to the version created and then apply to your context

For example:

Can you show me how to I can compare two business theories using a formal tone?

You can then apply the examples you’ve been given to your own context.

Level 4 content and meaning

When you check your work for content and meaning you have to make decisions about:

If you have interpreted and paraphrased your sources accurately,

If the content selected addresses your task,

If there is irrelevant or missing material,

If you have showed critical analysis,

Whether the aim, discussion, arguments and conclusions are appropriate

If you are over the word count which material can be removed

Whether your work has met the assessment aims / marking criteria

When you are at this level any changes made to your work are likely to have a significant impact on the meaning and are subject and context specific, because of this AI use is not recommended.

Find out more about how to make editing decisions about your work here.

Editing with AI tools