AI in tech writing roundup¶
The topic of AI is all the rage in the tech writing industry of late. This round up from Kayce Basques is a great overview of all the various use cases, and the status of them in the industry:
Basic content generation
ChatGPT can generate paragraphs or sections based on given topics or outlines, providing a starting point for technical writers. This can speed up the content creation process and help maintain consistency in writing.
There’s a lot of this happening. Tom Johnson has been using a prompt engineering approach to automate release notes authoring. I have also automated some of my changelog process with moderate success. Manny Silva is extensively automating first draft work. I can recall many more anecdotes like this.
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Grammar and spell-checking
ChatGPT can identify and correct grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and other language inconsistencies, leading to higher-quality content.
I have heard of technical writers using LLMs for one-off editing tasks. E.g. they were given the first draft of a new doc written by a software engineer (or product manager, or whatever) and were told that the doc must be published in a couple hours. The first draft had a lot of errors and typos. To meet the ridiculous deadline the writers fed the first draft through an LLM to quickly fix the major issues.
I had a pretty interesting experience with GitHub Copilot where I was able to catch 3-4 cases of misplaced words in a blog post recently. This is something that is really hard to catch when you’re reading your own content, and it was a great use.
How the sausage was made¶
I used the following prompt, which was actually partially generated from ChatGPT:
Then I updated it with a couple additional things to watch out for:
Please review the following blog post for:
1. Correct Markdown syntax, ensuring proper formatting for headings, links, lists, code blocks, and images.
2. Grammar and spelling, suggesting any necessary corrections.
3. Suggestions to improve clarity or readability where needed.
4. Consistent use of capitalization.
5. Consistent use of grammar rules like oxford commas.
I got this idea from a Reddit post with some recommended prompts for reviewing content.
I think that getting an automated “third party” review of content is a pretty powerful use of generative tools.
