Using AI to Improve Writing

Refactoring English book cover

Presented 2026-04-16

https://slides.refactoringenglish.com/

My AI writing philosophy

My AI writing philosophy

  • On the conservative end
  • If a human is reading it, a human should write it
    • If I can get it from AI, why does the reader need me?

My AI writing philosophy

  • You lose something valuable in outsourcing writing to AI

AI is never allowed to write

  • Blog posts*
  • Books*
  • Personal / work emails
    • Not even auto-complete

 

* Grammar/spelling fixes are okay

AI is never allowed to write

  • General rule
    • People are reading it to hear my original thoughts
    • I need a place to hear my own thoughts

AI is sometimes allowed to write

  • Bug reports
    • I’ll rewrite more heavily for small projects

AI is sometimes allowed to write

  • Commit messages
    • Only for solo projects
    • Only when AI wrote the code

AI is sometimes allowed to write

  • General rule
    • Things where the AI has more information than I do

AI is usually allowed to write

  • AI-directed documentation
    • e.g. AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, SKILL.md

AI is usually allowed to write

  • Writing that’s highly constrained by formality and convention
    • e.g., complaints to businesses (“complain about X, Y, Z and write in the style of a scary lawyer”)

Avoiding AI style

Avoiding AI style

  • Everyone wants to avoid sounding like AI

Avoiding AI style

  • Everyone wants to avoid sounding like AI*

* Except on LinkedIn

Same as avoiding plagiarism

Same as avoiding plagiarism

  • How most plagiarism stories go
    1. “I’ll copy this into my article and paraphrase it later.”
    2. “Whoops! I don’t remember which parts I copied.”
    3. Publish

Same as avoiding plagiarism

Even worse with AI

How to avoid plagiarism

How to avoid plagiarism

  • Your document is a “clean room”
    • Do not paste external text in unless you mark it as a direct quote
    • In notes, mark external text as direct quote
    • Transfer from external source to your document has to pass through your fingers

How to avoid plagiarism AI tone

  • Never allow AI to edit your writing directly
    • Paste text into a separate document/window and ask for rewrites
    • Ask for feedback in the chat rather than direct rewrites
    • Edits have to pass through you

Avoid AI cliches

Avoid AI cliches

“It’s not X, it’s Y”

It’s not just a new memory allocator. It’s a fundamental shift in how you think about memory usage.

Avoid AI cliches

Overuse of bold style

The client is able to request their own token. They can then use that token for two hours to query any GraphQL endpoint.

Avoid AI cliches

Leading emoji

The benefits of pair programming are:

  • 😜 Better connections between teammates
  • 📚 Increased knowledge sharing
  • 💪 Improved code quality

Avoid AI cliches

Avoid AI cliches

  • Avoid overusing any writing technique
    • 20 em-dashes per paragraph was always bad

How I use AI

AI as a smart thesaurus

The goal isn’t to trick your recipient. You’re not Huck Finn hornswoggling your friend into painting a fence. Instead, you’re approaching the recipient as a collaborator rather than an adversary you’re beating into submission.

—“Write Emails with Less Noise and Better Results”

AI as a smart thesaurus

Prompt: what’s a softer way of saying “beating into submission”

https://kagi.com/assistant/11804aa7-c3ed-4e23-848a-c3c2e9733b4a

AI as a smart thesaurus

The goal isn’t to trick your recipient. You’re not Huck Finn hornswoggling your friend into painting a fence. Instead, you’re approaching the recipient as a collaborator rather than an adversary you have to grind down.

AI as spellcheck

$ cat ./dev-scripts/prompts/fix-grammar.md
Identify any typos or grammar mistakes in this file.

Fix each issue one-by-one, and explain in the chat what you're fixing and why.

Limit your fixes to errors in syntax.

Do not suggest editorial or style changes or changes for the sake of clarity.

AI as spellcheck

  • Before this: Grammarly
    • Seemed to get progressively worse
    • Tons of false positives on code snippets
      • GPT/Opus always recognizes that they’re non-English

AI to explore alternate phrasing

Prompt: Write 5 alternative versions of this sentence:

“The most common writing mistake developers make is meandering.”

https://kagi.com/assistant/aa95ee49-b8bb-4c15-b0f9-9477817150b6

AI to explore alternate phrasing

The most common writing pitfall among developers is meandering.

—“Get to the Point”

AI as design reviewer

Prompt: Review this design doc.

Identify gaps in the design, confusing explanations, or contradictory specifications. Avoid suggestions about implementation details, and focus on high-level design and clarity.

Cite specific quotes and section headings. Do not rely on line numbers, as they’re likely to change during editing.

AI to pitch jokes

Prompt: Describe restaurant foods in unflattering terms. For example, a steak would be “a cow carcass cut into small pieces and then heated for 4 minutes per side”

https://kagi.com/assistant/ec9a2aa2-7d37-469c-9cda-825910d85f6e

AI to pitch jokes

AI to think of examples

Prompt: “You get dressed as Kyle explains all of the fantastic things he is capable of.”

This sentence is hard to read because the meaning of “dressed as Kyle” changes as you get deeper into the sentence. You might have thought the ending would be “dressed as Kyle for Halloween.”

Give a programmer-oriented example of a sentence like this

https://kagi.com/assistant/3307c2b4-45d9-404d-8f53-91caf6d2f661

AI to think of examples

The user logged in as the administrator was checking their email.

AI to create acronyms

Make an acronym for the bolded words

  • Efficient: You and your recipients…
  • Relevant: The recipients of the email..
  • Clear: Recipients understand what the…
  • Action-oriented: The email makes it clear…

https://kagi.com/assistant/3f78f77b-1f4a-4d72-8d3c-d227eb21d62e

AI to create acronyms

  • I published with “CLEAR” but dropped it after a few days
    • I felt like I was fitting the acronym to the lesson rather than the other way around

Refactoring English for AI?

  • Still on the fence

Refactoring English for AI?

  • Top pieces of guidance:
    • Write in active voice, not passive voice.
    • Use the inverted pyramid.
    • Use accessible terms in the early sentences.

Questions? Discussion?

  • How has AI been useful for your writing?
  • How do you want the book and AI to intersect?