Improving written expression

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Purpose

Text-based generative AI can suggest refinements to your phrasing and enhance the overall style of your writing. It serves as an assistive writing tool by offering precise and appropriate vocabulary, improving grammar and style, adopting an academic tone, and enhancing coherence and clarity of expression. Additionally, AI can aid in evaluating the quality of your essay by assessing factors like readability, grammar, and style. You can seek feedback on the clarity of your writing and identify potential errors and gaps. This feature is particularly valuable for students whose first language is not English.

Acknowledge

Please check and follow your local guidelines about whether this use of generative AI is permitted. If it is permitted and if you use this prompt in the process of creating work for assessment, you may need to acknowledge the use of AI.

Prompt

Note: The following prompts were tested with Microsoft Copilot for Web, but they are suitable for most language based generative AI tools.

Copy and paste a sentence or paragraph alongside asking questions like,

Are there any synonyms for <word> that would work better in this context? Why?

Can you suggest a more formal word to replace <phrase>? Explain your choice.

You could also prompt with a specific sentence or section and ask follow up prompts in order to reach a more concise sentence:

Is there a more concise way to express this idea? Why?

How can I make this paragraph more engaging to the reader? Why is your suggestion an improvement?

Make sure you modify the prompts above to suit your unit.

Explanation

These prompts give the AI a the task (e.g. perform a grammar check), and instructions (remedy any potential grammar errors).

These prompts help you to quickly identify and fix errors in your work with the opportunity to prompt further and improve your written expression to convey your meaning as clearly as possible.

They also include a request for the AI to explain its suggestions, helping you to learn as well as evaluate whether its suggestions are valuable.

Examples

The conversation below demonstrates the start of a conversation with generative AI and how you could ask it to improve the tone, conciseness and engagement of your writing.

Remember to view the end output and ensure it makes sense in the context of your work. Re-wording and additional re-phrasing may be necessary to properly embed the paragraph into your own work.

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