Although I write on the computer, I edit better when I have my work on paper. Maybe it’s because that’s how I learned to read and write, hunched over a desk.
The problem with this is that it slows down the writing process. I write on the computer, print out the work, scribble all over the paper, and then sit back at the computer to add the corrections to the electronic text. And my first drafts tend to look like this:
There is of course a benefit to going over my edits as I correct the text, as Nancy Settle-Murphy pointed out when she commented on one of my posts on LinkedIn.
”When I go back to type in my hand-written edits, I inevitably see more opportunities to strengthen the content, which I may have missed if I had a tool that could read my writing and understand my (old school) editing notations.”
I agree.
But I’m impatient.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was an app to which you could feed a page like the one above and it would churn out the corrected text?
I don’t think there is one (yet), but someone (thanks, Fabio!) suggested I uploaded the picture to GPT-4, and see what happened. So I did.
Censored?
First, a little bit of background about the piece I was working. It’s the chapter of my work in progress book “All the World’s a Workplace”. In it, I feed GPT-4 a Shakespeare speech or scene and ask it to adapt it to a theme of remote work. I then write a personal essay on the topic.
The chapter I was working on was the one titled “To Work from Home or Not to Work from Home.” I decided to try uploading a short section, to see whether it worked.
First, I asked the bot if this is something it could help me with. I often do that, as sometimes it tells me what instructions to give it, or what its limitations are.
Me:
If I upload here, a photo of a typed piece of text that I have made changes to with a pen, would you be able to transcribe the changes into text?
Bot:
Yes, I can help transcribe the changes you've made to a typed piece of text with a pen. Please upload the photo, and I'll do my best to transcribe the handwritten changes for you.
I uploaded the photo above.
Here is the transcription of the changes you made to the text:
- "WFH" is crossed out and replaced with "working from home". WHAT?
- "delivering training to virtual teams" is added above "I was already training in the field of virtual teams". GOOD ONE!
- "something you requested" is added in the margin, possibly indicating that the entire paragraph might have been something requested. HAAAA!
The rest was pretty standard, so I won’t share it with you. It got most of it right.
I actually wanted it to write out the full new text from me, but I suppose it did exactly what I asked it to do: “transcribe the changes into text" - it can’t read minds yet.
ME:
Can you write the text, incorporating the changes I made?
BOT:
Certainly, here is the revised text with your handwritten changes incorporated:
“This Thursday, I’ll be working from home,” my friend texted back when I asked her if she was free for lunch in Central London.
“Working from home?” I asked myself.
Now. What is this? Or should I say, WTF? Because the original, which wasn’t crossed out, said “WTF is WFH?” I asked myself.
It obviously couldn’t bring itself to swear, even in acronyms, and decided to paraphrase my work more elegantly, losing meaning and humour (if that’s your style!) in the process. Other than that, it did pretty well.
If I do more experiments, I’ll report back. Or maybe I’ll get on with it the analogue way, and take the opportunity to further improve my work in the process.
(You can see people’s suggestions here and please let me know if you have anything to suggest!)