What’s in this post?
- 1 — Different Proofreading Activities Made Easy With AI
- 2 — AI Tools I Use for Proofreading
- 3 — My Two Basic AI Prompts for Proofreading Blog Posts
- 4 — More Specific AI Proofreading Prompts for Blog Posts
- 5 — Tips for Using AI to Proofread Blog Posts
- 6 — Don’t Forget to Proofread These!
Don’t make the same mistake I did. When I started my first blog, I kept putting off proofreading my posts.
The result?
My posts didn’t connect with readers, and all my hard work was wasted. I got less income, fewer followers on my blog’s Pinterest page, and my search engine traffic dropped.
It ended up being one of my biggest lessons in blogging. Now, proofreading is a priority for me, and it should be for you too. (Here are some general proofreading tips and strategies I personally follow)
Yeah, proofreading is my priority right now, but it’s not something I really enjoy. It’s boring and takes up too much time. I’d rather spend more of my time creating content.
I wanted to find a way to make my proofreading routine faster and easier, so I started using free AI apps.
With their help and the prompts I created, I’m now three times faster at proofreading my blog posts compared to before.
Let me tell you more about them.
Different Proofreading Activities Made Easy With AI
Honestly, I can’t imagine proofreading my blog posts without these AI tools now.
Fixing grammar, spelling, punctuation, repeated words, and missing words has become almost instant with their help.
My nose no longer bleeds—LOL, I’m not a native English speaker—when I try to:
- adjust the tone of sentences,
- improve readability,
- choose better words,
- simplify jargon,
- or just make them sound more natural for American readers.
Removing fluff is super quick now:
- In the AI input interface, type a keyword to trigger the text expander or text replacement software to insert the proofreading prompt.
- Press CTRL+V (paste the fluffy paragraph)
- Press enter.
Notes about text expander or replacement
- When using my computer, I use text expanders like Beeftext (free tool) to quickly type long AI prompts for proofreading.
- When proofreading on my iPad, I use the text replacement feature in the keyboard settings to enter the AI prompt faster.
- If you’re using ChatGPT to proofread, you may not need a text expander—just give ChatGPT custom instructions to interpret keywords as proofreading commands.
AI Tools I Use for Proofreading
While one AI tool could make proofreading quick and easy, I use two because I prefer doing two rounds of proofreading.
They are ChatGPT Temporary Chat and Microsoft Editor, which is a writing assistant like Grammarly.
After I finish my draft in Notion, I go through each paragraph and let ChatGPT help with revisions. I often ask ChatGPT to read the paragraphs out loud to see if they sound awkward.
I use ChatGPT’s Temporary Chat because the data we enter here isn’t used to train OpenAI’s AI models.
After a few revisions, I open the web version of Notion in my browser, where I have the writing assistant extension installed. There, I make the final touches with Microsoft Editor, which helps me catch any errors I might have missed.
Once I’m done, I copy the entire draft into WordPress, where I do the last edits, mostly adding links and formatting things like paragraphs, quotes, or collapsible detail blocks.
My Two Basic AI Prompts for Proofreading Blog Posts
I’m not a fan of how generative AI works—it learns from us and then competes with our creativity. But since it’s already here, we might as well use it to our advantage.
Obviously, one way to do that is by using this tech for proofreading.
A few months after GPT-4 came out in early 2023, I started using generative AI to proofread my blog posts—and I haven’t paid for a pricey Grammarly subscription since!
Right now, I have a bunch of prompts I use to proofread my blog posts with AI (you’ll see them later). But most of the time, I just stick to the two prompts below.
They have this format: “<prompt>: <paragraph or sentence to proofread>”
Prompt #1 — Grammar
“Correct the grammar of this sentence while keeping my writing style”
I use this prompt when I think a paragraph or sentence gets my message across, but I’m unsure about verb tenses, prepositions, or other tricky grammar rules.
Prompt #2 — Readability
“Improve the readability of the sentence I’m about to give you. A first-year college student should be able to understand it easily. It should sound casual. Here’s the sentence”
I use this prompt when I think my sentence (or paragraph) is hard to understand or tough to simplify.
Remember, unlike textbooks, blogs should be easy to follow since not everyone online is fluent in English.
That’s why I also asked in the prompt to make the sentence casual and easy for anyone using the internet—mostly high school graduates or first-year college students—to understand.
More Specific AI Proofreading Prompts for Blog Posts
Sometimes, I need to be more specific with my proofreading prompts to improve parts of my draft. In this section, I’ll share them with you.
You can use them to create your own prompts, but I’d suggest not using some of them as they are for your proofreading tasks since we all have different audiences and styles.
Prompt #1 – Before Anything
Before I start proofreading, I give ChatGPT general guidelines for the revisions it needs to make. These instructions apply to all the prompts, so instead of repeating them each time, I give them once to save time and effort.
This is the prompt (and notes)
“We will be proofreading parts of a blog post draft today. Keep in mind that my target readers are 20- to 30-year-old <audience> from the U.S., and I want to sound <tone>.”
- Audience: bloggers, travelers, content creators, or business owners.
- Tone: friendly (personal posts), optimistic (spirituality posts), informal (travel posts), neutral (informative blog posts), authoritative (blog posts for teaching).
Note: I only include the ‘tone’ part of the prompt when I feel like I rushed my writing and didn’t think enough about how I’m communicating with my readers.
Prompt #2 — Introduction
The introduction is one of the most important parts of a blog post to me, so I have special prompts for it. However, I only use them when I can’t come up with an introduction that meets my standard.
Here are the prompts
- “I’m currently writing the introduction for my blog post. I’ll share the first sentence my readers will see. Please revise it to make it catchy. Give me three revisions. Here’s the sentence:”
- “I’m currently writing the introduction for my blog post. Help me improve these sentences I’m using to convince readers to continue reading. <see list below>. Here’s the paragraph:”
- Give a sense of urgency.
- Emphasize the problem and solution.
- Make the promise compelling.
- Trigger the reader’s curiosity.
Prompt #3 — Readability
Sometimes, when I’m in the “zone,” thoughts flow from my mind to my fingertips without stopping. I end up writing long sentences and paragraphs that are not only hard to understand but also difficult to read.
These prompts help simplify those sentences and paragraphs
- “Study the meaning of each sentence in this long paragraph. Based on the messages these sentences convey, break the paragraph into shorter ones to improve readability:”
- “I’ve written a long paragraph, and I want you to improve its readability by formatting it into bullet points. There should be one sentence before the bullets to explain what they’re about. Here’s the paragraph:”
- “Help me improve the readability of the long sentence I’m about to give you. Split it into two shorter sentences, making sure they convey the same message as the original. Here’s the sentence to revise:”
Prompt #4 — Fluency
Since I’m not a native English speaker and live in a country where English is a second language, AI really helps make my sentences sound better and less awkward.
Here are some of the most common prompts I use for this.
- “Please revise the sentence I’m going to give you. I want it to sound natural when read aloud. Here is the sentence:”
- “Help me rewrite the sentence I’m going to give you. The revisions should have rhyming words and be catchy when read aloud. Here is the sentence:”
- “I want you to modify the sentence I’m going to give you. Replace any words that aren’t commonly used, and make sure no word is repeated. Keep my writing style. Here is the sentence:”
Prompt #5 — Engagement
Reading our blog posts aloud often highlights areas that need improvement, like boring, monotonous sentences and confusing transitions.
These prompts can help fix those issues.
- “Improve the rhythm of the sentences in the paragraph I’m going to share with you. Make sure the sentences vary in length, and emphasize important points in one-to-three word sentences. Keep the original meaning of the paragraph as much as possible. Here is the paragraph to revise:”
- “Make the paragraph I’m going to share with you more engaging and less robotic by changing the sentence structure. Try to make each sentence have a different structure while keeping the original message. Here’s the paragraph to revise:”
- “I can’t find much connection between the sentences in this paragraph. Can you rewrite the entire paragraph to create a coherent transition between the sentences? Remember to keep the original meaning of the paragraph. Here is the paragraph to revise:”
Tips for Using AI to Proofread Blog Posts
Since I started using AI to proofread my blog posts, I’ve found ways to streamline my workflow and tackled a few problems along the way.
Here are some tips I’ve picked up that might help you too.
Faster Copy Paste
To make copying text from ChatGPT to Notion (or any editor) easier, I gave ChatGPT this custom instruction prompt:
“When I ask you to correct the grammar of a sentence or revise a paragraph, just show the answer—no explanations, no quotation marks. Do the same if I ask you to rewrite or revise a paragraph or sentence.”
With this, when I copy the text generated by ChatGPT, I only copy the revised paragraph I asked for.
Using Context to Revise
An exception to tip #3 is when you want to revise a sentence that needs context from the sentences before and after it.
In that case, you can use this prompt:
“Please revise the third sentence in this paragraph. Make it an idiomatic expression, using the first two and last two sentences as clues.”
You can replace “Make it an idiomatic expression” with any other command you want.
Revise Short Paragraphs
If AI doesn’t make big changes when you ask it to revise your paragraph, you might want to shorten it.
Depending on the AI’s capabilities and computing resources, it might struggle with processing large chunks of text.
Personally, I don’t ask AI to revise paragraphs longer than three sentences, but there could be exceptions.
Keeping the Style
Sometimes, AI completely rewrites a paragraph or sentence, and the result barely reflects your style or personality.
To avoid that, try adding these to your prompts:
- “preserve my writing style”
- “change the sentence structure, but keep the words I use”
Don’t Forget to Proofread These in Your Blog Posts!
Lastly, it’s not just the main content you need to proofread.
Make sure to check the captions, alt text for images, headings, url, and the excerpt before publishing!
Speaking of things to check before publishing, you’ll love my 10-step blog post pre-publish checklist. It covers everything I review before hitting publish to make sure my posts are reader-friendly, build a community, and turn casual readers into loyal fans.
Feel free to check it out! Good luck with your blogging journey!
This post is a resource for Explore to Thrive’s Interactive Pre-Publish Checklist for Blog Posts. Take a look!
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