The Benefits of Human Copyeditors

Paul S.
8 min readApr 18, 2024

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At Editly, we are obsessed with how to change AI content to human content to unlock the full benefits of AI for our clients. Whether for business, school, or personal endeavors, AI can be a valuable tool for saving time, conducting research, and unlocking creativity. But it cannot replace the human elements that give such projects life.

Indeed, the art of humanizing AI content that suffers from monotony and repetition cannot be well done by the simple scripts of paragraph rewriters or AI paraphrasers. It cannot be well done by prompting AI text generators to rewrite their own text as human. In fact, these tools usually make AI content even less readable and even more verbose — in other words, even less human.

Instead, humanizing AI requires a human touch. This is where Editly editors are happy to step in and guide you through a humanizing process that you can use to make any AI text into human text on your own.

Steps to Humanize an AI Text

To get you started, we have created a more comprehensive 5-step guide to humanizing any AI text, How to Change AI Text to Human Text in 5 Simple Steps. For this series, however, we have modified it so that you can begin to learn how to humanize AI text in just 3 steps.

Before we begin, however, let’s look at an AI text on our subject of the day: “The Benefits of Human Copyeditors.”

AI Text on the Benefits of Human Copyeditors

Human copyeditors offer invaluable benefits in the world of publishing and content creation, where precision, nuance, and authenticity are paramount. Unlike automated editing tools, human copyeditors bring a depth of understanding to their work that algorithms simply cannot match. They possess the ability to grasp subtle contextual meanings, interpret complex idioms, and appreciate cultural references, ensuring that the text not only adheres to grammatical standards but also resonates with readers on a deeper level. This level of insight is particularly crucial when editing works of fiction, scholarly articles, and technical documents where the accuracy of the content, as well as its presentation, can significantly impact reader engagement and comprehension.

Moreover, human copyeditors are adept at maintaining the author’s voice throughout a piece, a crucial aspect often lost in automated editing. Each writer has a unique style and tone, which a skilled copyeditor can preserve while still making necessary corrections and improvements. This personalized touch enhances the originality of the piece, making it stand out in a sea of content. Additionally, human editors can provide constructive feedback, suggesting ways to improve clarity, enhance flow, or develop arguments more effectively, thereby contributing to the overall quality of the writing in a way that automated tools cannot.

The collaborative nature of working with a human copyeditor also adds a layer of quality assurance that software lacks. Copyeditors not only fix errors but also engage in a dialogue with the author about the text. This interaction fosters a better understanding of the project’s goals and can lead to richer, more polished content. Furthermore, in the dynamic landscape of language where new slang, terminology, and usage norms continually emerge, human copyeditors can adapt quickly, incorporating contemporary language trends appropriately into their edits. Thus, the role of human copyeditors is indispensable, blending meticulous attention to detail with a nuanced understanding of language and communication. (308 words)

Step 1: Find Repetition in the AI Content

When we target repetition, we are focused on nouns (people, places, and things), verbs (action words), and adjectives (descriptors). We do not care about parts of speech such as articles (“a,” an,” “the”) and prepositions (“to,” “in,” “of,” etc.). In addition, we need to consider not just exact matches, but also the varying parts of speech for each word. So, let’s give it a shot and dive into the first step of our humanization — finding repetition (marked in bold).

Human copyeditors offer invaluable benefits in the world of publishing and content creation, where precision, nuance, and authenticity are paramount. Unlike automated editing tools, human copyeditors bring a depth of understanding to their work that algorithms simply cannot match. They possess the ability to grasp subtle contextual meanings, interpret complex idioms, and appreciate cultural references, ensuring that the text not only adheres to grammatical standards but also resonates with readers on a deeper level. This level of insight is particularly crucial when editing works of fiction, scholarly articles, and technical documents where the accuracy of the content, as well as its presentation, can significantly impact reader engagement and comprehension.

Moreover, human copyeditors are adept at maintaining the author’s voice throughout a piece, a crucial aspect often lost in automated editing. Each writer has a unique style and tone, which a skilled copyeditor can preserve while still making necessary corrections and improvements. This personalized touch enhances the originality of the piece, making it stand out in a sea of content. Additionally, human editors can provide constructive feedback, suggesting ways to improve clarity, enhance flow, or develop arguments more effectively, thereby contributing to the overall quality of the writing in a way that automated tools cannot.

The collaborative nature of working with a human copyeditor also adds a layer of quality assurance that software lacks. Copyeditors do not fix errors but also engage in a dialogue with the author about the text. This interaction fosters a better understanding of the project’s goals and can lead to richer, more polished content. Furthermore, in the dynamic landscape of language where new slang, terminology, and usage norms continually emerge, human copyeditors can adapt quickly, incorporating contemporary language trends appropriately into their edits. Thus, the role of human copyeditors is indispensable, blending meticulous attention to detail with an understanding of language and communication. (308 words)

As you can see, the repetition of nouns, verbs, and adjectives fills the AI content. In fact, more than 20% of the total words in the AI text are some form of repetition. As you may imagine, this far surpasses even the most monotonous and verbose human text. But, before we can deal with this avalanche of repetition, we need to complete the next step.

Step 2: Find the “To Be” Verbs in the AI Content

Here, “to be” verbs mean only the following: “am,” “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “be,” and “being.” So, this search is much more limited in scope and should thus proceed more quickly than the search in Step 1. Now, let’s take a look at our text and find the “to be” verbs (marked in bold and underline):

Human copyeditors offer invaluable benefits in the world of publishing and content creation, where precision, nuance, and authenticity are paramount. Unlike automated editing tools, human copyeditors bring a depth of understanding to their work that algorithms simply cannot match. They possess the ability to grasp subtle contextual meanings, interpret complex idioms, and appreciate cultural references, ensuring that the text not only adheres to grammatical standards but also resonates with readers on a deeper level. This level of insight is particularly crucial when editing works of fiction, scholarly articles, and technical documents where the accuracy of the content, as well as its presentation, can significantly impact reader engagement and comprehension.

Moreover, human copyeditors are adept at maintaining the author’s voice throughout a piece, a crucial aspect often lost in automated editing. Each writer has a unique style and tone, which a skilled copyeditor can preserve while still making necessary corrections and improvements. This personalized touch enhances the originality of the piece, making it stand out in a sea of content. Additionally, human editors can provide constructive feedback, suggesting ways to improve clarity, enhance flow, or develop arguments more effectively, thereby contributing to the overall quality of the writing in a way that automated tools cannot.

The collaborative nature of working with a human copyeditor also adds a layer of quality assurance that software lacks. Copyeditors not only fix errors but also engage in a dialogue with the author about the text. This interaction fosters a better understanding of the project’s goals and can lead to richer, more polished content. Furthermore, in the dynamic landscape of language where new slang, terminology, and usage norms continually emerge, human copyeditors can adapt quickly, incorporating contemporary language trends appropriately into their edits. Thus, the role of human copyeditors is indispensable, blending meticulous attention to detail with a nuanced understanding of language and communication. (308 words)

Step 3: Eliminate Repetition and “To Be” Verbs in the AI Content

At this stage, we should talk about exactly what we are seeking to accomplish with repetition. First, if we identify a pair of repeated words, then we only need to eliminate one of them for the repetition to disappear. Furthermore, the urgency of elimination is correlated with proximity. That is, the closer the repeated words, the more they undermine readability and allow immediate recognition as AI-derived. However, the farther apart the repetition, the less likely it is to impact the flow of the text. Finally, it should be noted that every text contains key words that need to be repeated because there simply is not another word or phrase that captures the correct idea.

On the other hand, “to be” verbs should be approached with the idea that the fewer that appear in a text, the less repetitious and boring it will be. For underneath the “to be” verbs lie many undesirable traits that AI has picked up from its training on bad writing. These include passive voice, repetition, and the use of many words instead of few. Therefore, you should aim to eliminate as many “to be” verbs as possible in the text.

By following Step 3 to its conclusion, we can now change AI to human text.

The Results of Humanizing the AI Content

Human copyeditors offer invaluable benefits in publishing and content creation, which emphasize precision, nuance, and authenticity. Unlike automated editing tools, they bring an understanding of contextual meaning, complex idioms, and culture that algorithms simply cannot match — one that adheres to grammatical standards, while resonating more deeply with readers. This kind of insight serves a particularly crucial role in reader engagement and comprehension in fiction, scholarly articles, and technical documents.

Moreover, human copyeditors can far better maintain an author’s unique voice throughout a piece. This personalized touch strengthens the originality of the piece, driving it to prominence in a sea of content. Additionally, human editors can better provide constructive feedback, suggesting ways to enhance clarity and flow and to develop arguments more effectively.

The collaborative nature of work with human copyeditors also adds a layer of quality assurance that editing tools lack. This interaction fosters a better understanding of the project’s goals and thereby results in richer, more polished work. Human copyeditors can also adapt quickly to incorporate contemporary language trends into their edits. Thus, their role is indispensable, blending meticulous attention to detail with a profound understanding of language and communication. (191 words)

AI Text vs Humanized Text

We have bolded the remaining repetition in the humanized text, and you can immediately see the reduction of repetition. However, if we approach it more mathematically, we find that the approximately 20% repetition in the AI writing has been reduced all the way down to approximately 5% repetition in the humanized writing. In other words, the repetition has decreased by 75 percent Moreover, the remaining repetition is concentrated in key ideas to the topic such as “human” and “human proofreaders.”

At the same time, we have eliminated every instance of “to be” verbs from the humanized text, thereby allowing us to fix the issues that accompany them. Of course, this includes unnecessary wordiness. In fact, in our endeavors to turn AI to human text, we have reduced the word count of the text from 308 words all the way down to 191 words. In other words, there are nearly 38% fewer words in our humanized AI content.

The Takeaway

As shown by the expert humanizers at Editly, you can turn ai to human text far better than any text generator or automatic rewriter. And you can do so in just 3 steps. However, if you want a helping hand with experience and expertise, don’t hesitate to get started on Editly.

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