The source sentence was “The vendor is not required to replace units that fail after the warranty window.” The rewrite said “The vendor replaces units that fail, including after the warranty window, where appropriate.” I had asked for a clearer tone. I got the opposite policy, dressed in calm verbs. That is the failure mode I care about. Not robots sounding like robots. Robots changing the deal.
A diff, not a vibe check
AI Rewriter takes the text you paste and returns a rewritten version. It does not open the PDF by itself. I extract or I copy the paragraph, I rewrite that paragraph, and I put back only the sentences I have compared. The comparison is a diff. I read the source and the rewrite in two columns, and I mark every number, name, date, and negation.
| Source | Rewrite | Keep? |
|---|---|---|
| not required to replace | replaces … where appropriate | No. Policy flipped |
| within 10 business days | promptly | No. Clock deleted |
| Acme Components LLC | the supplier | Only if the defined term is not “Acme” |
| We shipped 12 of the 14 units. | We shipped most of the units. | No. “Most” is a new claim |
| The lid sticks. | The lid can stick in humid weather. | No. Weather was not in the source |
The last row is the one that feels helpful. It also invented a cause. If I know the humidity story from a lab note, I may add it myself. I do not let the model add it because the sentence was lonely.
Prompts that stay narrow
“Make this clearer, same claims, do not add causes, keep every number.” I paste one section, not a whole manual. A manual comes back homogenized: warnings and ordinary instructions in the same polite voice, which is how a warning stops sounding like a warning. I rewrite the warning last, or not at all, if the original was already short.
If I need it shorter, I say shorter and I give a count. “Cut to 80 words.” Then I check that the cut did not drop the exception. Exceptions are what brevity eats. The sentence after “except” is the sentence I look for in the rewrite before I look at tone.
If I need it longer, I am usually wrong. Length without new facts is adjectives. I would rather add a real example from my notes than ask the model to expand. When I do ask for expansion, I label the draft “needs facts” and I refuse to ship it the same hour. Expansion is where humidity appears.
PDF-shaped prose, specifically
Text extracted from PDFs arrives with line-break hyphens, headers, and captions in the middle. I clean that mess before a rewrite. Rewriting the mess produces a fluent paragraph that still says “Page 4 of 9” in the middle of a duty. I have published that. The header had been rewritten into “as noted on page 4,” which sounded intentional. It was a running footer.
Defined terms stay in their capital letters. If the rewrite lowercases “Services” and the contract defines Services, I restore the capital. Tone is not worth a definitional fight. Same for “shall” if counsel asked for shall. I am allowed to hate shall and still keep it when the document is a contract and not a brochure.
Brochures are the easy case. I let the rewrite tighten them, then I read the claims against the spec sheet, not against my memory of the product. The spec sheet is a PDF I did not rewrite. Marketing copy that drifted from the spec is a returns problem. I diff those two as well, even though only one of them went through the tool.
Other languages: I get usable drafts and I get agreement errors. I do not ship a language I cannot read. I send it to someone who can, or I leave the source. A smooth wrong sentence in a language your reviewer does not speak will be approved, because it is smooth.
The paste goes to the model. Do not paste secrets to hear them sound more professional. A password rewritten into a “friendlier” sentence is still a password you just transmitted, plus a sentence you might accidentally email. I rewrite paragraphs that are already destined for an audience.
I store the source paragraph above the rewrite in the working doc until publish, then I delete the source from the published file and keep it in the project folder. If a question comes back — “did we promise replacement after warranty?” — I can show the source line and the rejected rewrite. The rejected rewrite is useful. It is the record of a mistake I did not ship. I do not find that record in the model’s memory. I find it in the file I saved.
A brochure paragraph that was allowed to change
Source: “The unit draws 40 W at idle and 220 W under the certification load in section 3.2. Do not cover the vents.” Rewrite, after I forbade new causes and demanded the numbers stay: “At idle the unit draws 40 W. Under the certification load in section 3.2 it draws 220 W. Leave the vents uncovered.” I kept it. The claims match. The warning is still a warning, only less cramped. That is the entire success case. It is smaller than the failure case, and it should be. Most paragraphs do not need a rewrite. They need a line break.
I tried the same tool on a safety sentence that was already eight words. The rewrite added “to ensure optimal performance,” which is how a vent warning becomes a suggestion. I reverted. Short warnings are done. If they are unclear, the fix is a noun, not a tone pass. “Hot surface” is unclear about where. “Hot surface on the rear plate” is a noun. I typed the noun. I did not ask for elegance.
Batch rewriting a 20-page extract in one paste is how a defined term gets “simplified” on page 2 and left alone on page 14. The document then uses two phrases for one thing. I rewrite the passages a reader stumbled on, and I leave the rest in the author’s voice, even if the voice is stiff. A patchwork of stiff and smooth is honest. A fully smoothed manual hides which sentences counsel reviewed. I would rather the reviewed sentences look like the review.
When the rewrite is for a PDF I will republish, I put the new text back in the authoring tool. I do not overlay it as a comment and flatten. Flattening is a different destruction. The authoring file stays the master. The PDF is an export. If I only have the PDF, I treat the Word extract as the new master and I say so in the folder, because the next edit will otherwise start from the old PDF and undo the diff I just did by hand.
I also keep a rejected sentence in the scratch file when the flip was subtle, not only when it was obvious. “Promptly” instead of “10 business days” did not feel like a policy change until a customer quoted “promptly” back and meant this week. The source said ten. The scratch file is why I could show the ten without arguing about my recollection. Subtle swaps are the ones worth filing. The grotesque ones nobody ships.