How to use AI to Rev Up Readability
I had Mexican Monday with one of my favorite tech friends. the other day. “Ann,” he says, “when are you going to start helping your clients use ChatGPT to write better messages faster?”
Gulp! Just the other day, I heard myself say in a PRSA webinar, “If you can’t write better than a robot, you’re in the wrong business.”
Turns out I was wrong.
People write better and faster with AI.
People who use ChatGPT to write messages get the job done 59% faster than those who don’t, according to a study by MIT researchers Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang. (And some of these folks had never used ChatGPT before, so that includes learning-curve time.)
Plus, those who used AI in writing produced better messages. Writers scored 4.5 on a 1 to 7 quality scale with ChatGPT, 3.8 without it.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll take an 18% boost in quality in less than half the time any time!
AI IS COMING!
Let’s pause for a minute and address the robot in the room: Am I afraid I’m going to lose my job to AI? No. But I don’t want to lose my job to someone who knows how to manage AI better than I do.
Think of ChatGPT is a really good virtual assistant — one who doesn’t sleep, doesn’t need to be paid and has read just about every book in the world (up until 2021). If you know how to use it, ChatGPT can help you write better, easier and faster.
But it’s up to you to know how to write well enough to give ChatGPT good direction, to review its work for accuracy and to edit what may or may not be a good first draft.
5 ways to write more clearly with ChatGPT
So how can you get your new, free assistant to help you Rev Up Readability in your next assignment? Try these prompts:
- Rewrite this in plain language.
- Rewrite this so a [your target]-grader could understand it.
- Rewrite this to hit [your target] on the Flesch Reading Ease score.
- Rewrite this with [your target]- to [your target]-sentence paragraphs.
- Rewrite this to average [your target]-word sentences with a [your target]-word maximum sentence length.
Now, polish up what ChatGPT gives you and press send!
You’re already getting better at writing with AI.
How can you reach all of your readers?
Read it and weep. More than half of all Americans have basic or below-basic reading skills, according to the DOE’s latest adult literacy test.
How well are you doing reaching these folks with your messages? 
To reach all of your readers — regardless of their reading level — please join me at Rev Up Readability, — our clear-writing workshop that begins on June 20.
You’ll learn to make every piece you write easier to read and understand. You’ll walk away with secrets you can use to reach more readers, measurably improve readability and sell concise writing to management. And you’ll learn to write messages that get more people to read your piece, read more of it, read it faster, understand it better and remember it longer.
Save up to $100 with our group discounts.
