Humanize AI Text: “What is Copyediting?”

During their work as online proofreaders, editors, and rewriters, the proofreading experts at Editly have mastered the art of humanizing AI text. In Humanize AI Text with Editly, they draw on their experience to offer insight into how to humanize an AI text. In this post, we embrace a matter of utmost importance to our souls—namely, copyediting.

ChatGPT Text Answer to “What is Copyediting?” 

Copyediting is the process of reviewing and correcting written material to improve its readability, accuracy, and coherence before it is published. This step in the editing process goes beyond the basic checks of proofreading, focusing on making the text clear, engaging, and free of errors in grammar, syntax, and fact. Copyediting ensures that a document adheres to a specific style guide and is consistent in its use of language, terminology, and formatting. Here are the key aspects of copyediting:

Key Aspects of Copyediting

• Grammar and Syntax: Correcting grammatical errors, improving sentence structure, and ensuring that the text uses correct and consistent syntax.
• Style and Tone: Adjusting the style and tone to ensure it is appropriate for the target audience, purpose, and publication. This includes adherence to a specific style guide (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) if required.
• Clarity and Flow: Enhancing the clarity of the text by rephrasing awkward or unclear sentences, improving transitions between paragraphs, and ensuring that the text logically flows from one idea to the next.
• Consistency: Ensuring consistency in terminology, spelling, capitalization, numerals, and formatting throughout the document.
• Accuracy: Verifying factual accuracy, dates, names, references, and quotations. This may involve checking the text against source materials.
• Legal and Ethical Standards: Checking for potential legal issues, such as plagiarism or libel, and ensuring the text meets ethical standards, particularly in academic and journalistic contexts.

Importance of Copyediting

• Enhances Readability: Copyediting makes the text more readable and engaging for the audience, ensuring that it communicates its message effectively.
• Improves Quality: By addressing errors and inconsistencies, copyediting raises the overall quality of the text, making it more professional and credible.
• Tailors to Audience: Through adjustments in tone, style, and language, copyediting helps tailor the text to its intended audience, increasing its impact and effectiveness.
• Ensures Accuracy: Fact-checking and corrections during the copyediting process ensure that the document is accurate and trustworthy, which is especially critical for educational, scientific, and informational texts.

Methods of Copyediting

• Manual Review: The copyeditor carefully reads the text, making edits and suggestions directly on the document. This can be done on a printed copy or using digital editing tools.
• Digital Tools: While copyeditors may use digital tools to help identify potential issues, their expertise and judgment are crucial for making nuanced decisions that software cannot.
• Collaboration: Copyediting can be a collaborative process, involving discussions between the copyeditor and the author to clarify intentions, resolve discrepancies, and refine the text.

Copyediting is a vital stage in the publication process, ensuring that texts are not only free of errors but also clear, coherent, and suitably tailored to meet the needs of their intended audience. (436 words)

Human Rewrite of the ChatGPT Text

Copyediting involves reviewing and correcting texts to improve their readability, accuracy, clarity, and coherence. In addition, copyediting ensures that documents adhere to a specific style guide and remain consistent in their use of language, terminology, and formatting.

Key Aspects of Copyediting

• Grammar and Syntax: Correcting grammatical errors, improving sentence structure, and ensuring correct and consistent syntax.
• Style and Tone: Adjusting the style and tone for the target audience, purpose, and publication. This can include adherence to a specific style guide (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).
• Clarity and Flow: Enhancing clarity by rephrasing awkward or unclear sentences, improving paragraph transitions, and ensuring the logical flow of ideas.
• Consistency: Ensuring uniformity in terminology, spelling, capitalization, numerals, and formatting.
• Accuracy: Verifying factual accuracy, dates, names, references, and quotations.
• Legal and Ethical Standards: Checking for potential legal issues, such as plagiarism or libel, and ensuring the text meets applicable ethical standards.

Importance of Copyediting

• Enhances Readability: Making texts more readable and engaging for the audience to effectively communicate their message
• Improves Quality: By addressing errors and inconsistencies, copyediting makes texts more professional and credible.
• Tailors to Audience: Copyediting helps tailor the tone, style, and language of texts to their intended audience, increasing their impact.
• Ensures Accuracy: Fact-checking and corrections during the copyediting process ensure that the document is accurate, a trustworthiness especially critical for educational, scientific, and informational texts.

Methods of Copyediting

• Manual Review: Copyeditors carefully read texts, making edits and suggestions directly on the document.
• Digital Tools: While copyeditors may use digital tools to identify potential issues, their expertise and judgment are crucial for making nuanced decisions that software cannot.
• Collaboration: Copyediting can be collaborative, involving discussions between the copyeditor and the author to clarify intentions, resolve discrepancies, and refine the text.

Copyediting is a vital stage in the publication process, ensuring that texts are error-free, clear, coherent, and suitably tailored to meet the needs of their intended audience. (315 words)

The AI Text vs the Humanized Text

Famous writer Louise Brooks has remarked that “Writing is one percent inspiration and 99 percent elimination.” While ChatGPT knows this quote (I checked), it seems that it does not truly understand it. Indeed, the ChatGPT response to our straightforward question clocked in at 436 words.

Conversely, our human rewritten version is only 315 words—or nearly 28% shorter than the AI text. Beneath the large number here is the process of eliminating repetition and utilizing richer, more specific words instead of longer, more generic phrases. (For a deeper dive into the humanization of AI text, please check out our post, "How to Humanize AI Text.")

You, too, can practice the above skills and become proficient at humanizing AI texts. But, if you would like an experienced helping hand, then don’t wait to get started on Editly.