# Editing an AI draft: the eight things to cut

An unedited draft has the same eight faults every time: it clears its throat, repeats itself, hedges, invents a figure, stacks adjectives, slips into marketing register, restates its own conclusion and leans on one phrase. Cutting them takes about twenty minutes and turns a page that sounds written into a page that says something.

Updated 2026-09-15 · Source: https://porteur.ai/guides/editing-an-ai-draft

## The eight tells, at a glance

| Tell | What it looks like | What to do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. The throat-clearing opening | Two sentences about why the topic matters before the topic starts | Delete. Start at the answer |
| 2. The summary paragraph | A paragraph under a heading that restates the heading | Delete, or replace with the first fact |
| 3. The hedged claim | “can vary”, “may depend on several factors”, “some experts suggest” | Decide, or cut the sentence |
| 4. The invented figure | A round percentage or average nobody supplied | Cut, or replace with a figure you can source |
| 5. The adjective stack | “a comprehensive, powerful and flexible solution” | Keep at most one, and only if it carries information |
| 6. The register | The marketing verbs a draft reaches for instead of saying the thing | Replace each with the plain verb |
| 7. The restating conclusion | A final section that lists what the page just said | Delete. End on the next step |
| 8. The refrain | The same phrase closing every section | Keep one use, rewrite the rest |

The rest of this page is a before and after for each, using a fictional invoicing product at yourproduct.com.

## Tells 1 and 7: the opening that clears its throat, the conclusion that restates

A draft almost always starts one paragraph before the beginning, and ends one section after the end. Both are habits of essay writing and both cost you the reader.

- Before: “In today's business environment, invoicing across borders has become increasingly common. Understanding how to do it correctly is essential for any growing company. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know.”
- After: “An invoice to a client abroad needs the currency on it, the right VAT wording, and a payment route that does not eat the difference. Here is what goes wrong on each.”
- Before, at the end: “In conclusion, invoicing internationally requires attention to currency, tax and payment methods. By following the steps above, you can ensure a smooth process.”
- After, at the end: “Next: set your default currency on /settings/billing, then send yourself a test invoice to see what the client sees.”

> A page ends on what the reader should do next, not on a summary of what they just read. They were there.

## Tells 3 and 4: the hedge and the invented figure

These two are the dangerous pair. The hedge wastes the reader's time; the figure can be wrong in a way a customer will quote back at you.

- Before: “Payment terms can vary depending on a number of factors, and it is generally recommended to consider what works best for your business.”
- After: “Use thirty days unless the client asks for more. Shorter terms read as distrust to a first-time client; longer ones make your cash flow their problem.”
- Before: “Studies show that around 30% of international invoices are paid late.”
- After: cut the sentence, or replace it with a figure you own: “Of the last hundred invoices our customers sent abroad, the ones without the currency in the subject line were the ones they chased.”

The rule for figures: put your finger on each number in the draft and name where it came from. If you cannot do it in ten seconds, the number goes. A model produces figures shaped like real ones, with no memory of where they came from, because there was nowhere.

## Tells 5 and 6: the adjective stack and the marketing register

Both come from the same place: a model trained on marketing pages produces marketing prose when the brief does not forbid it. Both are mechanical to fix.

| Before | After |
| --- | --- |
| A comprehensive, powerful and flexible invoicing solution | An invoicing tool that handles multi-currency |
| Streamline your workflow with our integrations | Connect your bank and stop copying numbers by hand |
| Frictionless international payments, out of the box | Get paid in euros without a conversion fee at both ends |
| Transform your finance operations | Cut the hour a month you spend on invoices |

Keep the word list itself somewhere you can paste it into every drafting prompt, with the replacement beside each one.

```
leverage      -> use
unlock        -> get, or delete the sentence
seamless      -> delete
empower       -> let, help
robust        -> delete
game-changer  -> delete
dive in       -> start
elevate       -> improve
```

Pasting the list into the prompt reduces the cleanup. It does not remove it, so read for them anyway: a draft that avoided all eight will have found a ninth.

## Tells 2 and 8: the paragraph that repeats, the phrase that returns

Under a heading like “Choosing the right currency”, a draft will begin: “Choosing the right currency is an important decision when invoicing internationally.” That sentence carries nothing the heading did not.

- Before: “Choosing the right currency is an important decision. There are several factors to consider when making this choice.”
- After: “Invoice in the client's currency if you can absorb the conversion. Invoice in yours if you cannot, and say so in the terms.”

The refrain is the subtler one. A draft finds a phrase it likes and ends every section with it: “and that is what makes the difference”, “which is where the real value lies”. Read only the last sentence of each section, one after another. The repetition becomes obvious in ten seconds.

## The pass, in the order that wastes the least time

1. **Cut the opening and the conclusion** Do this first. It is two deletions and it changes how the rest of the page reads.
2. **Hunt the figures** Every number, one at a time, sourced or cut. Do it before you fall in love with any sentence.
3. **Kill the hedges** Search the draft for “can vary”, “may”, “some”, “generally”, “often”. Each one is either a decision you have to make or a sentence to delete.
4. **Run the word list** The banned register words, mechanically. Replace each with the plain verb.
5. **Read the last sentence of every section** Catches the refrain and the summary paragraphs at the same time.
6. **Add what only you know** One paragraph of first-hand material: the mistake customers make, a screenshot, a number from your own data. This is the part that makes the page worth publishing.
7. **Read it aloud** Assembled sentences are audible before they are visible. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long.

## What to keep, and when to stop editing

Do not edit to make the page look human to a detector. Those tools report probabilities from statistical patterns, not proof, and Google has said it does not use AI detection as a ranking signal. Editing for a score makes pages longer and worse.

- Keep the structure, if it is a good one. A clean outline is the thing a model does well.
- Keep the plain sentences. Short and regular is not a fault; it is the house style.
- Keep the lists and tables. They are what a reader scans and what an assistant quotes.
- Stop when every figure is sourced, nothing is hedged, and there is at least one thing on the page that could only have come from you.

If that last condition cannot be met, no amount of editing will save the page. The problem is upstream, in a brief that had nothing of yours in it.

## Questions

### How long should editing an AI draft take?

About twenty minutes for fifteen hundred words if the brief was good, and much longer if it was not. Most of that time goes on checking figures and adding the first-hand paragraph, not on rewriting sentences.

### Should I edit until it passes an AI detector?

No. Detectors report probabilities from statistical patterns and both flag human writing and miss edited AI writing. Google has said it does not use AI detection as a ranking signal, so editing for the score adds length without adding value.

### What is the single most important edit?

Sourcing or cutting every figure. An invented number is the one fault that survives publication, gets quoted back at you by a customer, and sits on the page for a year.

### Can I ask the model to edit its own draft?

For the mechanical passes, yes: the register, the length, the hedges. It cannot check whether a figure is true, and it will preserve a wrong number faithfully, so the fact-checking pass stays with you.

### My draft is fine but boring. What is missing?

First-hand material. A draft assembled from what already exists on the subject reads as fine and forgettable. One worked example with real numbers, one screenshot or one opinion with its reason changes the page more than any rewrite.

## Read next

- [A writing workflow with AI that does not produce filler](https://porteur.ai/guides/ai-content-workflow): Five steps: the facts, the brief, the draft, the human pass, the read-back. The shapes to copy, and the failure each step prevents.
- [AI content detectors: what a score means, and why you should not rewrite for it](https://porteur.ai/guides/ai-content-detectors): Detectors report a probability, not proof. They flag human writing and miss edited AI text. What Google says, and what to check on a page instead.
- [Prompts for SEO work that are worth keeping](https://porteur.ai/guides/ai-prompts-for-seo): A prompt is a brief: audience, facts, constraints, shape. Six prompts written out in full, what each is for, and where each one lies to you.
- [AI-written content and Google: the policy, in Google’s words](https://porteur.ai/guides/ai-content-and-google): Google does not penalise AI writing as such. It acts on pages made at scale with nothing of their own. Here is the policy and where the line sits.
- [How to write a post that ranks, from the results page backwards](https://porteur.ai/guides/how-to-write-a-blog-post-that-ranks): The results page is the brief. Read it, write the outline from it, answer in the first two sentences, and write the title last. A worked example.
- [Thin content](https://porteur.ai/glossary/thin-content): Thin content is a page with little value of its own. See why it drags a small site, how to spot it, and how to expand, merge or remove.
- [Information gain](https://porteur.ai/glossary/information-gain): Information gain describes what a page adds beyond the pages already ranking. What the patent says, what is not measurable, and how to write with it.

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