In this article
Text you have typed but not sent can be worked on. Select it in the composer and options appear — fix the grammar, tighten it, change how it sounds — and the result replaces what you wrote, still unsent.
One of those four things is an unambiguous improvement. The others are choices, and one of them is a mistake.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Clean up a message before sending it.
- check_circle Shorten your own writing safely.
- check_circle Recognise what a tone change costs.
- check_circle Catch the edit that changed your meaning.
It works on a selection in the composer, so nothing has been sent while any of it is happening.
edit_note Correcting is not the same as rewriting
These options look like one feature with a few settings and they are not. Fixing spelling and grammar leaves your sentence intact and removes the errors. Changing the tone replaces your sentences with different ones that mean approximately the same thing. Those are different acts with different consequences, and the button is the same size for both.
The correction case is where the value clearly is, and it is largest for anybody writing in a language that is not their first. Being taken less seriously because of an article or a verb ending is a real cost that has nothing to do with what you know, and removing it in one tap is a genuinely good use of a machine.
Rewriting is where judgement is needed, because what gets smoothed away is usually the part that sounded like you. A message that arrives in unfamiliar prose from somebody you know well is noticed, and what it communicates is distance.
Four things you can ask it to do
Ordered, roughly, from safest to worst.
done_all The one with no downside
short_text Safe, because you know what it meant
face_retouching_natural A real choice, with a real cost
person_off Where it stops being your message
Let it fix what you wrote. Be careful about letting it decide what you write.
lock It is text leaving the composer
Processing a selection means the text has to be handled somewhere beyond the keyboard. For the ordinary message that is unremarkable — it was about to be sent to somebody anyway. It is worth a thought before reaching for it on the things you would not paste into any other tool: a password, an address, somebody else's private situation, anything written in a conversation you chose specifically because it was private.
The practical version of that rule is simple enough to keep. If you would not summarise the message with an outside service, do not polish it with one either — and a slightly awkward sentence in a sensitive conversation has never once been the problem.
settings Using it
- Select the text in the composer The options appear for the selection.
- Use it to correct, freely That one has no downside.
- Shorten your own long drafts Then put one thing back.
- Treat tone changes as a choice Not as an improvement.
- Write difficult messages yourself Fluency is not the missing part.
- Re-read before sending Especially the small words.
This page changes the words. The curriculum step is everything else a message is made of: emphasis, quoting, code, links, and which of it survives being passed on.
At a glance
- 1AI text editor
Fix grammar and typos before sending.
- 2Shorten safely
Shortening your own text keeps your meaning.
- 3Reread
Check small words like 'not' and numbers after edits.
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