Last time we tackled automation solutions to help you write faster. But faster isn’t necessarily better. So, it’s time to look at the quality of your content. Can I improve my writing quality (with automation and AI)?
Tracking the review process
In a society that wants more – more products, more content – it’s crucial to check and verify everything before you release it into the wild. To manage their wealth of content, companies rely on formal review and approval workflows. In many cases, they use management systems designed to help users organize content and automate the writing process. Frankly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a document or content management system that doesn’t already have built-in processes for this.
For example, the IXIA CCMS lets you configure your workflow and roles from start to finish. Writers are automatically assigned to documents they create. They can send something out for review to another user who receives an automated message informing them they’ve been assigned something to review. Writing, reviewing, approving - all of it is tracked within the system so you can trace what was done when, and by whom.
If you don’t use these kinds of systems, tools like Power Automate or Python can automate the necessary steps for you, such as sending documents to reviewers, tracking changes, collecting feedback from users, and updating statuses.
Reviewing your own text has become less of a challenge
A built-in review process is great for collaboration, but what about reviewing your own text when you are doing the actual writing? You can’t always rely on your own eyes or find time in a colleague’s schedule to do a quick peer review.
Fortunately, these days pretty much every writing tool has the following features:
Predictive text
Spelling, grammar, and punctuation checks
Writing style consistency checks, including suggestions
Clarity, conciseness, and inclusiveness checks
Terminology checks
Acronym lists with clarifications
Statistics for readability, complexity and more
Reviewing in Word and XML
In Word, for example, you can ask Editor for suggestions or have it correct your spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The Editor will also provide you with style suggestions or give you options for refinement. It doesn’t take long to analyse and improve a text like the one you are reading right now. Depending on the language, the tools are often extremely reliable, though never 100% (which is reassuring, in a way).
As we can expect, this field of writing and reviewing is ripe for all sorts of AI applications. Most writing assistants offer quality checks on your content and some come pre-programmed with the relevant prompts.
If you use XML, you can ask Heretto’s Etto to analyse a topic you’ve written and list any issues it might find. Similarly, you can ask the AI Positron Assistant in oXygen for grammar or readability suggestions, both on the topic you’re working on or across multiple topics or maps. For more advanced requests, many AI assistants will rewrite your passive sentences for you. Just remember to always preview it before you insert the suggestion into your text.
So, will all of this improve my writing quality (with automation and AI)?
Yes and no. No, because keeping pace with testing the latest developments is a full-time job in and of itself. Organizational workflows can be complex and fitting in new tools – and customizing them to your needs – can be challenging and time-consuming. But at the same time, yes, because the options for review are continuously evolving with the integration of AI. Once you find the tool(s) that work for you, you'll be producing higher quality content more efficiently.
So not only can automation help you write faster, it can also help you write better. But can automation help your content meet your user’s needs? Keep an eye on this blog to find out soon!