What Is a Writing Refiner?

The tech industry is fiercely vying to create your documents for you. At Intelligent Editing, we’re taking a different approach.

We believe in the craft of editing.

We believe people make the best editing decisions and they always will. This steadfast belief in human discernment underpins our approach. We also recognize that AI isn’t just about generating documents. It can improve efficiency and offer valuable insights. We see a future where professionals across all language specialities, and at all stages of document production, embrace the next generation of AI tools. So, we’re introducing Draftsmith to help with checking from the initial draft onwards.

In between the creation of the first draft and the copyediting stage lies a crucial process of refinement. It’s a blend of writing and editing. And that middle stage is where we believe AI can offer professionals the most support.

Figure 1: Refining is where AI language tools can help professionals

The Art of Writing Refinement

AI writing tools can create impressive first efforts, which can be a useful jumping-off point. However, like many writers, you may consider the act of drafting an essential part of your creative and cognitive workflow, preferring to pen the initial draft yourself. Either way, once you have that first draft, it’s time to start refining.

Refining shares similarities with editing, but it’s typically a task undertaken by writers themselves before the copyediting phase. The refining process includes all revisions made after the initial draft until you reach the stage where you’re ready for a copyedit.

Draftsmith’s approach to writing refinement provides tools designed to:

Clean up the document to help readers deeply engage with its substance and meaning.
Redraft and revise to increase engagement, empathy, and impact.
Simplify complex and technical writing.
Finalize a draft.

Document creation doesn’t end with a final draft. For the next stage of polishing and copyediting, we offer PerfectIt. PerfectIt doesn’t use AI and isn’t a writing refiner. We believe each of these tools has its own distinct role in the writing and editing process.

How Is a Writing Refiner Different to Spelling and Grammar Checkers?

While spelling and grammar checkers frequently employ AI technology, their primary function is to finalize a draft by correcting spelling and grammar errors and ensuring it’s free from basic mistakes.

Draftsmith, on the other hand, operates on a more granular level, offering sentence-by-sentence assistance wherever you need it. While there is some overlap with spelling and grammar checking, a writing refiner looks at the quality of the writing itself and supports the broader aspects of document creation.

How Does a Writing Refiner Clean Up Text?

Improving a draft demands deep and thoughtful engagement with a text. However, that’s hard to do if the text is filled with distracting errors or hard-to-understand phrases.

A writer with dyslexia using voice-to-text transcription or an author fluent in multiple languages may introduce slight errors into their manuscripts. Such mistakes can unfairly draw criticism and hinder the reader’s ability to connect with the content. AI tools, like those offered by Draftsmith, are changing the game by leveling the playing field for all writers.

With Draftsmith’s text-cleaning tools, you can quickly transform dictated text or compositions by writers working outside their first language into prose that more accurately conveys the author’s intent. This not only fosters a fairer, more inclusive writing environment but also makes it easier to refine the text for overall quality and effectiveness.

Can a Writing Refiner Help with Engagement, Empathy, and Impact?

Understanding and engaging an audience are distinctly human skills. So how can AI help?

If you’re working on an announcement, press release or marketing copy, the exact words you choose play a crucial role in how people connect with your message. A writing refiner can spark ideas and inspiration. But it doesn’t know the audience. It doesn’t even truly understand what engagement is. A writing refiner can, however, generate suggestion after suggestion through its algorithms. Then it’s easy for you to decide what will most effectively resonate with your audience.

What Can a Writing Refiner Offer for Simplifying Complex Writing?

Communicating complex information is challenging. Professionals immersed in specialized fields often get so accustomed to their domain’s jargon that it becomes difficult to gauge what will be comprehensible to outsiders. Whether it’s delivering medical advice in a language that patients can understand or writing multi-million-dollar engineering proposals that make sense to evaluators, the value of clear communication cannot be overstated.

Simplifying complex writing is faster with a writing refiner. Draftsmith enhances the readability of expert content, providing alternatives for rephrasing that make text more digestible. It can even tailor suggestions to specific levels, including second grade, sixth grade, eighth grade, tenth grade or college reading levels.

Sometimes AI tools overlook important nuances, so critically evaluating their suggestions carefully is essential. But even when some suggestions aren’t right, Draftsmith enables fast and easy selection of the optimal choice that captures what you intend to say in in a way that resonates with your audience.

How Does a Writing Refiner Help to Finalize a Draft?

When it comes to document finalization, everyone needs a second set of eyes. We all get used to the text and we stop being able to see errors.

AI doesn’t excel at subtlety in writing. So when the text is almost done, a human copyeditor will do a better job of preserving the author’s voice. And tools that work at the level of the entire document will be more useful for grammar mistakes (e.g., Microsoft Editor) or consistency errors (e.g., PerfectIt).

However, when you want a second opinion on a line edit or if you want to check for typos, Draftsmith can help. It can take a fresh look to ensure that your text is as good as it can be without compromising your control over the edits, ensuring that the final document is the best version of your work.

The Clippy Legacy

We know. We know. We want to mention it before anyone else does! When you build an assistant within Microsoft Word then you’ll always be compared to the most infamous assistant of them all:

For those fortunate enough never to have encountered Clippy, perhaps it’s best to keep it that way! For those who have, it’s safe to say the world of assistants in Office has come a long way. We promise that Draftsmith will never pop up and offer to help you unless you ask it to!

What Draftsmith will do is make everything after that first draft feel more like working with a writing partner. It provides suggestions whenever you want them.

If you’re ready to put the memories of Clippy behind you, and if you’re ready to embrace the world of what AI can do for you, then it’s time to try a writing refiner.

Try Draftsmith for free here.