I tried a new AI prompt for editing a couple of work-related documents—an email and a blog post—that my team plans on publishing.

The prompt was a version of this: “Can you please edit this following draft for polish and tighten up each sentence one at a time?” 

The result was a line by line comparison of the original text and AI’s suggested polished text. I decided which version sounded better, what was missing from both versions, and felt whether it was working or not. It felt really helpful to literally focus on one line at a time—I could clearly spot the differences. (Saeed Esmaili has written about this before!)

I noticed that AI was very helpful with spotting the more routine fixes, such as unnecessary or repetitious words. It also freed me up to notice other line edit opportunities—a better transition here, a clearer introduction there, and parts where neither my original text nor AI’s suggested text felt right.

While the team at The New York Times has similarly asked AI to help their writers by suggesting edits, they will not use AI to draft or make significant revisions. That seems like a sensible policy. I’m excited to see how else AI can help augment this line editing process—though I would not be interested in having it replace a person’s writing directly, and I don’t think it will be as helpful as a developmental editor. 

While this style of editing felt very helpful for professional writing, I plan on writing and editing this blog and my book the old fashioned way. (I do intend on leveraging AI at work, and in other ways though!)