Can AI Tools Ever Understand That Writing Is More Than Text?
By Daniel Heuman
Professional writing is not just text. I’m not saying that figuratively. I mean it literally! This isn’t about the depth or impact that good writing has.
This is about the fact that professional writing includes visuals, layouts, formatting, citations, URLs, and much more. How can people copy and paste text from an AI tool and pretend non-textual elements don’t matter?
Copy and paste can obliterate parts of the document
Copying and pasting text replaces everything. It replaces hyperlinks. It replaces formatting. If you have footnotes, it can delete them. Even if the quality of the AI text is amazing (which it usually isn’t), copy and pasting text that frequently forces you to reformat everything, and rewrite footnotes, doesn’t save time or effort.
As we developed Draftsmith, we tried to do things differently. We made sure that copy and paste is not part of the solution. Then we examined every element of a document to find ways to preserve what is there while maximizing the benefits of AI.
No perfect solutions
Creating efficient AI workflows for professional documents is challenging. Handling non-text parts of the document was one of the biggest challenges we faced in developing Draftsmith (and one that we still continue to improve on).
This article discusses our approach to a document's non-text sections using Draftsmith. It shows what the tool can do and what it can’t.
To help you understand the design choices we made with Draftsmith so you can sharpen and improve documents as efficiently as possible, this article covers:
Footnotes
Links and content controls
Citations
Quotes
Bold, italics, and other formatting
Footnotes
Copying and pasting text over a footnote marker deletes the entire footnote (and all the work you put into it).
Take a moment to let that sink in.
If you miss a small character while copying and pasting, the whole footnote will disappear. As if that wasn’t bad enough, copy and paste isn’t the only problem. If you use Microsoft Copilot to rewrite a sentence with a footnote, it will not preserve the footnote, it will simply delete it without any notification.
With Draftsmith, we started with the premise that there are two types of people in the world:
People who put footnotes at the end of a sentence (where they belong)
People who put footnotes in the middle of a sentence (which, though necessary at times for precise attribution of legal sources or in writing such as medical or scientific writing, where citation precision is crucial, is generally so wrong it keeps me awake at night).
If there’s a footnote at the end of a sentence, Draftsmith preserves that. The footnote isn’t altered in any way.
What if you place the footnote in the middle of the sentence? Our goal with Draftsmith is to maintain nuance and meaning. Even if a footnote is in the middle of a sentence, we ensure Draftsmith never overwrites it. Draftsmith treats the word the footnote is next to as its anchor, then:
If Draftsmith’s suggested text does not alter the anchor word, the footnote stays where it is (even if that location feels like an affront).
If Draftsmith’s suggested text alters the anchor word and the user wants that change, Draftsmith moves the footnote marker to the end of the sentence (where it probably should have been in the first place!).
Links and content controls
Links are often underlined and contain a URL that sends the user to a location on the web. They can be presented in different formats and send the user to other sections in the document or sources of information.
Content controls are containers in a Word document. They can be references to other places in the document or they can contain text elements that automatically update.
Links and content controls take time to create. Even if you’ve learned that Ctrl+K is the shortcut for adding a link (truly the greatest of all shortcuts), they still take time and effort. There is nothing more frustrating than a copy and paste function that replaces the links. It’s especially difficult with content controls because the text may look the same at first, but the automatic updating is lost when you copy and paste over it.
Draftsmith’s suggestions work with text that contains links or content controls. However, Draftsmith will never replace any text that contains a URL or content control. Instead, Draftsmith gives users a warning which allows you to amend the text manually. Ignoring the warning and clicking “Accept all” won’t change that text.
Citations
The disregard for acknowledging source material is one of the most problematic elements of AI. So, it probably won’t surprise readers to know that copy and pasted AI text can often ignore citations. Microsoft Copilot’s auto rewrite feature sometimes preserves citations and sometimes it doesn’t. Once that citation has been overwritten, it’s a lot of work to find it again.
Draftsmith reduces the number of citations that might be lost, but it can’t completely eliminate the possibility. There are three types of citations: footnotes, dynamic citations, and static citations. Draftsmith will never overwrite citations that are footnotes, treating them just like other footnotes.
Dynamic citations are a type of content control created by citation programs such as EndNote. Draftsmith will never overwrite dynamic citations and will treat them just like footnotes.
Static citations are entered manually in parentheses. These are harder to automate solutions for. Since Draftsmith makes suggestions at the sentence level, it’s more likely to preserve static citations in parentheses compared to other tools. However, Draftsmith has suggestion options such as “Simplify” that may make suggestions that do not include the original citation. If Draftsmith’s suggestions skip a citation, you can simply ask it for another suggestion.
Quotes
Most AI applications are inconsistent. Sometimes they keep a quote, sometimes they rewrite it. When you copy and paste that text from the AI, there is no way to go back and check it.
Draftsmith is different. Draftsmith preserves direct quotes. It builds all of its suggestions around the idea that users who include direct quotes would rarely want to alter those. It doesn’t matter if you are simplifying text, improving fluency, or reducing word counts. No matter what suggester button you use, Draftsmith preserves the original quote.
Of course, it’s always important to be careful. Multiple quotes in a sentence or inconsistent style of quotation marks could confuse Draftsmith, making it unable to identify a quote. However, in most situations, Draftsmith is designed to treat your document with more care so you can trust its suggestions and work faster.
Bold, italics, and other formatting
Bold and italics can add important meaning to a paragraph. They may, for example, add emphasis, mark out a title, or indicate a foreign word. Formatting like this is intentional. But it’s all lost when you copy and paste text from an AI. Copilot’s rewrite feature drops formatting too.
Draftsmith balances speed and care when checking for formatting. If it finds any formatting in a sentence, it provides a warning to check carefully before replacing the text. You can ignore the warning and replace the text, or you can preserve formatting by entering changes manually.
We believe it’s important to balance speed and care. In the case of links and content controls, the work to restore the original is time consuming. So Draftsmith never replaces text that contains those elements. With formatting, the work is easier to repeat, so Draftsmith gives a warning but will replace that text if the user chooses to ignore the warning.
A Hippocratic oath for AI writing tools
As soon as you realize that documents consist of more than text, you understand that improving text with AI will always be a careful balancing act. Do you accept revisions and risk losing links, formatting, and footnotes? Or do you slow down and do things manually?
Our approach with Draftsmith is that it depends on the type of formatting. Losing a footnote creates more work than losing some bold formatting. So Draftsmith treats them differently.
AI writing tools should never harm the text. It’s bad that even built-in tools, such as Copilot, can delete non-text elements of the document by accident. We are still clearly in the early stages of what these tools can do.
We designed Draftsmith to consider many of these issues. However, even as we developed a product that takes more care with documents, we had to recognize that there are no easy answers.
We consider Draftsmith 2.0 to be just the beginning. We believe that articles like this that show the limits will help to build trust as we continue to push the boundaries of what AI tools can help with.
Ready to see how AI can support you beyond just text?
Try Draftsmith for free today to experience first-hand how non-generative AI handles citations, formatting, and footnotes with the care your writing deserves. Explore the seven-day free trial to see why professionals are trusting Draftsmith to refine, protect, and sharpen their documents.
Your text, and everything accompanying it, will thank you!