AI and the Writing Process – Revising and Editing
An Important Note on Academic Integrity
Academic and professional integrity are critical elements of student and professional conduct. Always be sure that the use of AI as a tool for your work is allowed and that you are clear about the parameters you need to follow and your responsibilities when you use it. Always document and cite your use of AI.
Without the explicit permission or instruction of your instructor, you should never submit work produced by ChatGPT or other AI. Doing so is an academic offense. From University of Waterloo guidelines: “Using ChatGPT (or similar tools that generate text, code, or visual images) for content generation and submitting it as one’s own original work is a violation of the University of Waterloo’s Policy 71 (Student Discipline).”
In the following examples, the 💬 symbol indicates the prompt entry into ChatGPT-3.5.
Introduction
Revising and editing are part of the drafting process, so you may switch between the previous resource and this one. When you have a draft that you’re ready to revise, we always recommend that you look at the big picture elements first (structure, flow, and clarity) before looking at grammar or mechanics (verb agreement, spelling, punctuation).
1. Getting Revision Feedback for Organization and Flow
When drafting a written assignment or an outline or script for a spoken assignment, it helps to get feedback from someone else about how they are reading it. Some examples of useful feedback are whether the work is organized in a way that makes sense and if the main arguments are clear. Asking someone to pick out your thesis or identify your main arguments and supporting evidence can tell you if these elements are clear to your reader.
This kind of feedback is called descriptive feedback. It can come from a friend or classmate, a WCC advisor or tutor, or from GenAI like ChatGPT.
🚩 IMPORTANT NOTE: By sharing your work with GenAI like Chat GPT, you are entering your writing and intellectual work into a system that is the private property of a corporation. Once you share your work, you may be relinquishing control of how it gets used from that point forward. We recommend reading the terms and conditions of the software you use to understand the risks of inputting your work into any AI system.
2. Getting Feedback for Improvement
In the previous examples, we have avoided asking ChatGPT for suggestions for improvement.
While you can ask ChatGPT how you can improve your work and it will provide some helpful advice, proceed with caution. It often offers generic “one-size-fits-all” recommendations. Sometimes it doesn’t have an accurate understanding of the conventions of your discipline, and it lists suggestions that may not be appropriate for your work.
Always consider GenAI advice with a critical lens. Compare with examples from your course or field. Or check with a Writing and Communication Centre advisor or tutor.
3. Getting Editing Feedback
GenAI editors are now integrated into most of the software we write with. Editors are embedded in Microsoft, Google, and other products. If you have used these features, they can be helpful, but they can be wrong and create errors. Many recommendations are stylistic and can affect your writing voice, or they can reduce an emphasis you need or a nuance you want to be careful about.
When in doubt, confirm what embedded GenAI editors suggest: Use judgement, critical thinking, and external sources for confirmation whenever you use GenAI editors to help with grammar and mechanics. We also encourage you to be confident in your word and style choices and ignore the suggestions if they don’t fit your purpose. You can check suggested changes by getting feedback from ChatGPT as outlined below.