Robert Desprez Communications

ChatGPT: The AI-powered proofreader

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Chat­G­PT, a text-gen­er­at­ing mod­el devel­oped by Ope­nAI to sim­u­late respons­es that resem­ble human con­ver­sa­tions, saves you time and effort by edit­ing your documents.

Copy a page of con­tent into Chat­G­PT and request that it sum­ma­rize the infor­ma­tion. In sec­onds, it sum­ma­rizes the mate­r­i­al before your eyes—much faster than any human that I know.

For a tool that is just emerg­ing, it is sur­pris­ing­ly ver­sa­tile. You can ask it for help with pro­gram­ming, brain­storm­ing, writ­ing head­lines (Chat­G­PT sug­gest­ed the head­line for this blog post), trans­la­tions, mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al, and plan­ning a trip.

A quick simple test

I decid­ed to give it a test. I copied an ear­li­er blog that I draft­ed about Mad­Cap Flare and delib­er­ate­ly added errors (high­light­ed in red) to the text. In my state­ment to Chat­G­PT, oth­er­wise known as a prompt, I wrote, “Check the fol­low­ing con­tent for incon­sis­tent acronyms, con­sis­tent spelling of com­pa­ny names, gram­mar and typos, and make sure all num­bers under 10 are spelled out.” 

In under 10 sec­onds, the AI tool gen­er­at­ed a new ver­sion of the con­tent and sum­ma­rized the edits made:

Chat­G­PT quick­ly caught all the errors and even cor­rect­ed the case of “Robo­Help,” which is the offi­cial name of the help author­ing tool.

Purge passive voice using ChatGPT

Many tech­ni­cal writ­ing depart­ments fer­ret out exam­ples of pas­sive voice and strive to re-write the con­tent so it is active because the writ­ing is more suc­cinct and eas­i­er to under­stand (of course, there is a place for pas­sive voice). In the fol­low­ing exam­ple, I asked Chat­G­PT to revise the fol­low­ing sen­tences that use pas­sive voice:

In moments, Chat­G­PT revised the sen­tences so they were active:

ChatGPT does have limitations

The AI tool does have its limitations:

  • Lacks under­stand­ing: If you write a tech­ni­cal report about a mine or a pro­pri­etary soft­ware pack­age, it will not under­stand the details of the con­tent. Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts must still vet the accu­ra­cy of the content.
  • Good prompts are required: Typ­ing vague com­ments like “edit this doc­u­ment” and the tool may not edit what you require. If you want to check a doc­u­ment for pas­sive voice, include the specifics of what you need.
  • Chat­G­PT was last updat­ed in 2021: If you require cur­rent infor­ma­tion about a major world event last year (such as Rus­sian’s inva­sion of Ukraine), Chat­G­PT will be “in the dark.”
  • Be care­ful of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. See Gen­er­a­tive AI Chat­G­PT Can Dis­turbing­ly Gob­ble Up Your Pri­vate And Con­fi­den­tial Data, Fore­warns AI Ethics And AI Law

Still, it is sur­pris­ing­ly pow­er­ful and fast tool that can help with writ­ing and edit­ing. Check out ChatGPT. 

Editing Tips in Word: Automated Ways to Find Acronyms

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For all the dis­cus­sion about using con­tent man­age­ment, Dar­win Infor­ma­tion Typ­ing Archi­tec­ture (DITA), and writ­ing for tablets and smart­phones, I find that most clients I work with are still writ­ing at least some con­tent in Microsoft Word.

Most tech­ni­cal writ­ers I know agree that Word has its share of weak­ness­es when author­ing long tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments. Still, many clients grav­i­tate towards it because it’s con­sid­ered “free”—it is almost always installed at a client’s workplace.

For a cur­rent client, I edit long tech­ni­cal Word doc­u­ments that are often rid­dled with acronyms.

I edit the con­tent using some of the stan­dard tech­niques used by edi­tors and tech­ni­cal writ­ers: I com­pare the terms used in the doc­u­ment against the department’s style guide and I use an edit­ing check­list. With­in the last year, I’ve also start­ed using Word’s find fea­ture to scru­ti­nize the document’s acronyms and initialisms.

Finding Acronyms Automatically in Word

In almost every doc­u­ment I read for one client, there is an issue with acronyms not being spelled out or acronyms being incon­sis­tent­ly applied. One auto­mat­ed way to find all the acronyms in a doc­u­ment is to use wild­cards in Word’s Find menu. I first dis­cov­ered this trick on LifeHacker’s web site. I doc­u­ment­ed the fol­low­ing steps using Microsoft Word 2016.

To look for acronyms in a document:

  1. In Word, open a file that you want to edit.
  2. Open the Find win­dow (press Ctrl + F on your keyboard).
  3. In the Nav­i­ga­tion pane, select Advanced Find.

Advanced_Find

  1. Click the More » but­ton.
  2. In the Find what field, type <[A‑Z]{2,}>
  3. Select the Use wild­cards check box.

Find_and_replace_wildcards

  1. Click Read­ing High­light, and then select High­light All.

Find_and_replace_highlight_all

Word high­lights all the ini­tialisms and acronyms in the file. Here is an example:

Acronyms in Word_example

I have found that auto­mat­i­cal­ly search­ing for acronyms has been a tremen­dous time saver and has helped me find count­less incon­sis­ten­cies in client files.

When edit­ing tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments, what tips or tricks have you used to find errors and inconsistencies?

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290