How to check machine-written content before it goes out under your name
Not by reading the whole thing with a furrowed brow. By looking for four specific things that break most often — in the order that finds them fastest.
Machine-written material is often good. It is also confident in places where it has no right to be. The trouble is that both look identical: smooth sentences, correct grammar, a matter-of-fact tone.
Here is a method that takes less time than reading the whole thing and catches more.
1. Numbers, dates and proper nouns first
Start with what can be settled definitively. Go through the material looking only for those: every figure, every deadline, every name of a statute, an institution or a tool.
This is where models go wrong most often and most expensively. A plausible-sounding number in a document nobody checked can live inside a company for years. If something has no source, there are two options: find the source, or delete the sentence.
2. Then the places where the text turns general
A model with nothing to say does not fall silent — it writes a general sentence. “It is worth ensuring appropriate procedures”, “the key is the right approach”, “remember to observe the applicable regulations”. Each is true and none adds anything.
Those sentences are a signal that specific information was missing there. That is your list of things to add from your own knowledge — and usually the most valuable part of the work.
3. Check whether chapters repeat each other
In longer material it happens that chapter four and chapter seven explain the same thing in different words. Readers experience that as padding, even when both passages are correct.
Fastest way to find it: read only the table of contents and the first sentence of each chapter. Repetition becomes visible in two minutes.
4. Finally, tone and things you would not say
The material goes out under your brand, so it speaks in your voice. Check that it does not promise things you do not do, recommend things you would not recommend, or sound like advice where it should be information.
This matters most on legal, tax and health subjects. A sentence pointing the reader to a specialist is not decoration there — it is a necessary element.
What this method does not fix
It does not substitute for knowing the field. If nobody on your side knows the subject well enough to catch a factual error, no procedure will make up for it — and the honest answer then is not to publish, rather than to publish faster.
If you do know the subject, this method cuts editing from several hours to one. The model writes eighty per cent of the text; the twenty per cent you add is what people come to you for.
Frequently asked questions
How long does checking a thirty-page document take?
With this method, usually forty minutes to an hour. Reading cover to cover takes three times as long and catches no more, because it looks for everything at once instead of specific things in turn.
Will the model admit when it does not know something?
Rarely, and it cannot be relied on. Missing knowledge usually shows up as a general sentence where a number belongs, or as a number that sounds plausible and has no source.
Does internal material need checking if nobody outside will see it?
Yes, though differently. Internal material carries no reputational risk, but somebody will make a decision on the basis of it — and that is the more serious risk.