Posts Tagged → writing

A Student’s Guide to Writing with AI

I finally got around to reading ChatGPT’s Student Guide to Writing with ChatGPT, and I think it’s pretty good. The reality is that these tools aren’t going away, and students today should learn how to use them to improve their work product, not replace it.

The guide offers a solid list of ideas — none of which include the prompt, “Please write this for me.” Instead, it emphasizes using AI as a tool to refine thinking, generate ideas, and improve clarity. That’s exactly how I use AI in my own writing.

For example, I’ve been experimenting with having AI read my draft blog posts and ask me clarifying questions. More often than not, those questions push me to refine my ideas and make the post better. The AI isn’t writing for me; it’s helping me sharpen my own words.

For students (and writers in general), the key is understanding that AI is most useful as a creative assistant, not a shortcut. The better your input, the better your output.

If you’re curious about using AI in your writing, I’d recommend checking out the guide.

iA Writer Improvements

For reasons unknown, I took about a year off from using iA Writer and recently rediscovered it.

They’ve made a lot of improvements. For example, you can import text into your document, and iA Writer will track that as imported text. This works well if you use a large language model (LLM) to help with your writing.

The ability to highlight structure and grammar is better than ever, and the library features are much improved. Historically, I felt that was the weakest point of this application. Another feature that caught me flat-footed was inter-document navigation. Just surround the document name with two square brackets and command-click to jump between them. Everything links these days.

I’ve always felt the iA Writer team has respected the application’s primary purpose: to give you a focused writing environment. However, the evolution of the application, with a few additional features, dramatically improves its utility without losing sight of that.