An Editor’s Take on Draftsmith 2.0
As an editor, I’m always looking for tools to enhance my craft and streamline my editing process. Enter Draftsmith, an AI-powered writing assistant that promises to elevate your writing.
Why Use Draftsmith?
Developed by the same people who created PerfectIt, Draftsmith 2.0 offers editors and writers different ways to revise their text. It can simplify complex sentences, reduce word count, increase engagement, improve empathy, clean up dictated text, and help you write in plain English.
Draftsmith 2.0 is the second—and much improved—version of this tool, providing a better user experience while keeping your text secure. According to its website, Draftsmith 2.0 “runs on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service with its enterprise-grade security…Draftsmith does not store text or use it to train any AI models.”
Draftsmith works alongside you in Microsoft Word, allowing you to accept—or not accept—its suggested changes and apply those changes to your Word document with one click. As of this writing, individuals can purchase Draftsmith 2.0 for $10 a month, with additional options for teams and organizations. You can also try it free for seven days.
How to Use Draftsmith
Let’s look at how to use Draftsmith as an editing tool. I had ChatGPT create a short paragraph on the importance of sunscreen and asked it to include typical mistakes made by a nonnative English speaker. I also added a typo. I’ve underlined in red some of the more glaring errors in the paragraph:
The importance of sunscreen is very much significant in the protection against harmful UV radiations. Many researches have been conducted by scientists in field of dermatology, and they show that sunscreen can help prevent skin cancer and other skin damage. The reason is because UR rays from sun are penetrating to skin cells and they are causing DNA mutations.
I wanted to see what editing suggestions Draftsmith would provide.
First, I installed Draftsmith, which was very easy. Once installed and selected, it appeared in my ribbon as shown in this screenshot:
How Draftsmith Appears in Your Ribbon
As you can see, I have several options. Draftsmith organizes its editing features into categories, such as Pre-Edit and Simplify, which are further divided into activities, as displayed in this chart:
| Category | Activities |
|---|---|
| Pre-edit |
Fluency Enhancer: Improves English fluency. Dictation Fixer: Cleans up transcribed speech. |
| Revise |
Engagement Tuner: Makes writing more lively and engaging. Word Count Trimmer: Reduces text to meet word limits. Empathy Tuner: Optimizes tone for content marketing and SEO. |
| Simplify |
Readability Tuner: Adjusts for specific reading levels. Plain English Converter: Clarifies complex content. |
| Review | Editing Helper: Copyedits and proofreads text for final polish. |
Draftsmith’s Decision Box
To begin, I clicked on “Launch Draftsmith” and selected my preferred Activity.
Since my example paragraph is from a nonnative English speaker, I chose the Fluency Enhancer (under Pre-edit) and then selected Improve English:
Suggested Changes from Draftsmith’s Fluency Enhancer
Draftsmith analyzes my paragraph sentence by sentence. Its suggested changes appear in the Decision Box on the right.
Let’s take a closer look at that Decision Box:
Draftsmith’s Decision Box
If I don’t want to accept the changes for a particular sentence, I simply select the purple bar on the left to retain my original text and move on to the next sentence. If I want another suggestion, I can select the green bar on the right, and Draftsmith will provide a new revision. If I want to edit Draftsmith’s suggestions, I select the pencil icon and make my revisions in the Decision Box.
As you can see in the preceding screenshot, selecting an activity such as the Fluency Enhancer gives you three default Suggesters: Improve English, Simplify, and Translate to English. If you want more options, click the down arrows to find additional Suggesters under Audience, Style, Line Edit, Source, and Funny. I often use these extra options to customize what Draftsmith offers (e.g., I ask Draftsmith just to check for typos), but I recommend that new users familiarize themselves with the default Suggesters before exploring additional ones.
Let’s return to the paragraph on sunscreen written by a nonnative English speaker. I liked all of Draftsmith’s suggested changes, so I clicked Accept at the bottom of the Decision Box. And voilà—all of Draftsmith’s changes are now in my Word document, tracked as my edits:
Draftsmith’s Changes in My Word Document
Here are the paragraphs side by side:
| Original Paragraph | Revised Paragraph |
|---|---|
| The importance of sunscreen is very much significant in the protection against harmful UV radiations. Many researches have been conducted by scientists in field of dermatology, and they show that sunscreen can help prevent skin cancer and other skin damage. The reason is because UR rays from sun are penetrating to skin cells and they are causing DNA mutations. | Sunscreen is essential for protecting against harmful UV radiation. Many studies have been conducted by scientists in the field of dermatology, and they show that sunscreen can help prevent skin cancer and other forms of skin damage. The reason is that UV rays from the sun penetrate skin cells and cause DNA mutations. |
The paragraph on the right is clearly easier to read. The revised paragraph is not perfect, but I chose the Fluency Enhancer for this edit to correct common errors made by nonnative English speakers. After accepting these tracked changes in my Word document, I can edit it myself or choose another tool in Draftsmith to further refine the text. Either way, the revised paragraph is a significant improvement.
Draftsmith’s Limitations
Draftsmith can be a bit glitchy. For example, it sometimes gets “stuck” on a paragraph, requiring me to close the tool and reopen the tool to get it “unstuck.” That said, this updated version of Draftsmith is a considerable improvement over the original, which was noticeably more prone to glitches.
One issue I encountered was rejecting a single change in a sentence while keeping the other tracked changes in the Decision Box. Draftsmith doesn’t seem to allow that. My workaround was to accept all changes in the Decision Box so they would appear in my Word document with Track Changes on and then manually undo the change I didn’t want.
Finally, like all AI tools, Draftsmith struggles with formatting. It removes bold, italics, and other styling unless you use markdown. The good news is that Draftsmith flags text with formatting, allowing you to manually revise it in your Word document instead of losing your formatting.
Final Thoughts on Draftsmith
Bottom line: Draftsmith’s biggest advantage is its seamless integration with Microsoft Word. Its suggestions appear directly in your document using Track Changes, with no copying and pasting required, unlike tools such as ChatGPT or editGPT. This integration alone saves significant time. And I find its suggestions—and the speed with which they appear—pretty darn good.
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