Once the domain of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) is now present in most of our daily lives in one way or another.
Used in everything from smartphones to highways, AI can also be an indispensable tool for improving your writing skills.
Whether you’re crafting the next best-seller, an A+ essay, or a business report, AI-powered software can act as an invaluable second pair of eyes to ensure your writing is polished and accurate.
After all, what’s wrong with making life a little easier?
What AI Is Available to Help Writers?
AI-powered writing assistants are one of the most helpful tools at a writer’s disposal.
As well as checking your work for basic spelling and grammar mistakes, more advanced products can even suggest stylistic and structural changes to elevate your writing even further.
Some of the most popular AI writing assistants include ProWritingAid, Writer, Grammarly, and Hemingway Editor.
Many AI writing aids feature integrations to help you edit wherever you write. This usually includes web browser extensions, as well as plug-ins across Windows apps, Google Docs, and Open Office.
This means your writing assistant can help with everything from PowerPoint presentations, novel chapters, and academic writing to emails, Facebook posts, and even WhatsApp messages.
How Can You Use AI to Improve Your Writing Skills?
AI writing assistants make it simpler and quicker to produce accurate and polished work thanks to a helpful array of tools. Read on to discover some of the ways AI can improve your writing.
Grammar Check Your Work
It’s all too easy to make simple spelling and grammar errors, especially if you’re tired or working to a tight deadline.
However, misspellings can make your writing appear unprofessional and difficult to understand. There’s nothing worse than mixing up there, their, and they’re in an important work pitch!
A grammar checker is an essential tool for writers because it acts as a safety net and ensures mistakes like this don’t slip through the cracks. Not only will it clearly flag any errors as you write, but it will also offer advice on how you can correct them.
Assess the Readability of Your Work
The best writers are the ones that make their work accessible and easy to understand. Ideally, you want your work to have a high level of readability, which determines how easy it is to comprehend. When long, unwieldy sentences or strings of complex words creep into your writing, you risk losing the reader’s interest.
This is especially true of business reports and emails, where the reader should be able to quickly understand the most important points.
Readability is equally as important in creative writing. While there’s more scope to be playful with language, you still want the reader to be able to follow the plot and enjoy reading your work.
Many AI writing tools use an algorithm to assess your work’s readability and give you an idea of how difficult it is to read. In many cases, they’ll identify which paragraphs are over complex and recommend how you can make them easier to understand.
Check for Plagiarism
If you use someone else’s ideas, words, or thoughts in your writing without proper attribution, you’re guilty of plagiarism. The repercussions for plagiarism can be extremely serious. You could be expelled from university, irreparably damage your reputation as a writer, or even face legal action.
While some people intentionally steal the work of others and try to pass it off as their own, some writers unintentionally fall foul of plagiarism.
For example, if you include a quote in an essay and forget to put it in quotation marks and cite it properly, that’s plagiarism. You can also self-plagiarize if you copy a section of work that you’ve already published elsewhere.
Thankfully, some AI writing assistants offer plagiarism checkers so you can make sure your work is original. This kind of software runs your writing against vast databases of web pages, journals, and articles.
It will then alert you to similarities between your work and other texts, and suggest changes to ensure your writing is unique.
Conclusion on Improving Your Writing Skills Using AI
We all need a helping hand from time to time–even if you write for a living! AI writing assistants are a great resource to help sharpen your writing skills, whatever writer you are.
From picking up basic spelling and grammar mistakes to giving structural recommendations and assessing originality, AI writing tools are a valuable weapon to have in your arsenal.
