A tone-of-voice document gives AI something to imitate
A tone-of-voice document sets out how a business actually talks: which words it uses for its own product, which words it avoids, how formal the sentences run, whether it uses contractions, what a typical customer already knows before they arrive. Feed that to an AI tool before asking for a draft and it has something concrete to copy. Feed it a single line like "write in a friendly, professional tone" and it falls back on the same handful of habits every other prompt produces, because friendly and professional describe almost nothing on their own. The guide to defining and documenting tone of voice covers what actually belongs in that document.
Specific briefs produce specific copy
A brief that names the product, the audience, the format and the constraint gives the tool something to lead with. "Write a product description for a wireless kettle" gives it nothing to distinguish that kettle from any other on the market. "Write a 60-word description for a stainless steel kettle that boils one cup in under a minute, aimed at someone replacing a kettle that's started leaking" gives it a fact and a reason the reader is there in the first place. AI cannot look at a product and notice a detail like that for itself. Left with a gap, it invents a plausible-sounding claim to fill it, and that claim will not always get caught before the page goes live.
Structure decides more than wording does
Deciding the shape of a page before generating anything, what sits above the fold (the part visible before the reader scrolls), what the reader needs to know before being asked for anything, where the call to action lands, gives the tool a container to fill in order. Left to invent its own structure, it tends to reach for the one it has generated most often across its training, which is rarely the shape a particular product or service actually needs. Structuring the piece first is a five-minute job that saves an hour of rearranging paragraphs afterwards.
Openings and calls to action need a human hand
The first line and the closing instruction are the two points where a reader actually decides something, which makes them worth writing by hand even when the paragraph between them started life as a draft. An AI-generated opening tends to summarise the whole piece before it has earned the reader's attention, and its calls to action default to "learn more" or "get started" because those phrases appear constantly in whatever it was trained on. A call to action is a promise about what happens next; "learn more" promises nothing a reader can act on. Running the opening line through the headline scorer gives a quick second opinion before it goes anywhere near a live page: it checks word count, clarity, and the balance between emotional and rational language against UK conventions, entirely in your browser, and it's worth reading the three suggestions it gives rather than the number alone, because the score is one method applied consistently, not a verdict on whether the line will work. How to write a call to action covers the difference between one that names an outcome and one that names a feeling.
Editing is a separate step from drafting
Reading a draft line by line, checking for invented specifics, repeated sentence shapes, and words the tool reaches for that nobody would actually say, is a distinct piece of work from writing the brief, and it usually takes longer than the drafting did. Once the draft has been through that pass by hand, running it through the readability and clarity checker adds a second check: it works out reading age, average sentence length, how many sentences are passive, and flags any industry jargon it detects, before giving an overall verdict of clear, review, or revise with the problem sentences marked. Because the draft is the reader's own commercial copy, the whole check runs in the browser and nothing is sent anywhere, which matters more here than it would for a tool working on someone else's headline. The verdict is one reading applied consistently, not a guarantee the copy will land with a particular reader, so it's worth treating it as a second opinion rather than the final word. The full method for the editing pass itself is set out in editing AI copy. The short version is that nothing goes live until a person has read every sentence and asked whether it's something they would actually say to this reader.
The same brief, three ways
The brief: a homepage hero line and one call to action for a small accountancy practice that works with sole traders and freelancers, aimed at someone who has been doing their own books and wants to hand it over.
Unedited AI
Unlock your financial potential with expert accountancy solutions tailored to your unique needs. Partner with us today and simplify your finances.
Nothing here names the audience, the service, or what happens after clicking. "Unlock your financial potential" could sit on any accountancy site in the country, and "partner with us" is a call to action that promises a feeling.
Edited AI
Accounts and tax returns for sole traders and freelancers, handled by someone who already knows what a CIS return is. Send your records over.
Same starting draft, rewritten by hand to name the audience the practice actually serves and to replace the vague sign-off with an instruction that says what happens next. The invented enthusiasm is gone, and the one piece of insider language left in, a CIS return, does real work: it tells a sole trader in construction that this practice already speaks their language.
Human-written
You did the invoicing at midnight so you wouldn't have to do the books on Sunday. We do the books for sole traders and freelancers, plainly and on time. Send your records over.
The gap between this and the edited AI version is smaller than the gap between either of them and the original draft. What the human version adds is a specific, slightly odd observation, the midnight invoicing, that a tool has no way to produce because it has never sat across from anyone doing it. That kind of detail is what an editing pass should be looking to add.