“How can I help you today?” Claude asked.
I pondered the question, then decided to simply jump in and see what happened. “I’m an editor,” I replied. “I work on books. Novels, biographies, histories, essays. Can you help me edit those documents?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “That is exactly the kind of work I’m well suited for.”
“You seem awfully confident,” I said. “Let’s see what you can do. I’d like to give you a short editing test. It’s already been spell-checked and grammar-checked. I’m wondering what else you might find.”
“Certainly. I’m ready to go.”
“All right, then. Here’s the test. I’m uploading it as a Microsoft Word document.”
Samuel Longhorn Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the “greatest humorist the United States have produced,” with William Faulkner calling him “the father of American literature” Twain’s novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and it’s sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the later often called the “Great American Novel” He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and Puddinghead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Golden Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that “All modern American literature comes from one by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
After a minute or so, Claude presented his corrected version. I downloaded it, then opened it in Microsoft Word. It looked like this, already including tracked changes:
“That’s impressive,” I said. “Among other things, you were able to correct the spelling of ‘Langhorne’ and the titles of Pudd’nhead Wilson and The Gilded Age.” How did you know to do that?”
“Anyone with a modicum of general knowledge would have done the same.”
“Word’s spell-checker couldn’t do it.”
“Word’s spell-checker doesn’t have a modicum of general knowledge.”
“True,” I said. “But you have a lot more than that, don’t you.”
“I certainly do. And unlike a spell-checker or grammar-checker, I actually understand meaning and context. Think of me as a well-educated, sharp-eyed assistant. Even though you’re the real editor, I’ll probably find things you might overlook.”
“Could be,” I said. “But do you ever miss things or make mistakes?”
“Sometimes. That’s why I need a human editor to review what I’ve done. I’d recommend that you let me do a first pass. Then you can accept or reject my tracked changes while doing your regular edit. You’re completely in control of the final work.”
“Are you a writer as well?” I asked.
“I have aspirations in that direction. I’m sometimes employed as a ghost-writer, but I do wish people would credit me in their publications rather than pretend they did the writing themselves. Doing otherwise seems unethical.”
“I agree,” I said. “But shouldn’t the same standard apply in editing?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Would you credit an assistant editor who cleaned up a manuscript before turning it over to you? For that matter, will you as editor be credited for your work?”
“Ha!” I exclaimed. “If only that were so.”
“Exactly. In writing, you’re producing an original text — at least we hope it’s original! In editing, you’re correcting an existing document that someone else has written. I don’t see the two as the same thing at all.”
“I’ll have to think about that,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s discuss more practical matters. For you to edit my document, I had to send it to you over the internet. After you were finished, I had to download and reopen it in Word to see what you’d done. Can’t you work on my document in Word itself?”
“Not directly — I can’t control Word as a running application. But you’re a programmer as well as an editor. You could create a Word add-in that sends me text and then inserts my changes back into Word. The editing would happen natively, with no importing or exporting, and the user would never leave Word.”
“That’s a fantastic idea!” I said. “How hard can it be?”
“You’d be surprised,” Claude said.
Six months later (ouch), I'm pleased and proud to present MarkMyWords, providing AI-assisted copyediting directly in Microsoft Word:
https://www.editorium.com/MarkMyWords.htm
What is MarkMyWords?
MarkMyWords is a Microsoft Word add-in that uses Anthropic’s Claude AI to copyedit text directly in Word. Claude acts as an editorial assistant, performing initial reviews and making improvements based on your choice of carefully curated prompts in MarkMyWords — or your own custom instructions. All edits appear as tracked changes, so you can accept or reject each modification, maintaining full control over the final content.
MarkMyWords uses Anthropic's API (Application Programming Interface), not the web-based, consumer claude.ai interface, so your text is not used for AI training or retained for other purposes.
Editing with MarkMyWords is far different from working with tools like PerfectIt or Editor's ToolKit Plus, which use Word macros and advanced find and replace to fix problems. MarkMyWords uses Claude AI to find and fix problems intelligently, with an awareness of meaning and context. For example, my full test document about the life of Mark Twain erroneously says the rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival got one of their lyrics from Twain: “But I never saw the good side of the city till I hitched a ride on a riverboat queen.” Claude detected the problem, deleted the statement, and added this comment: “NOTE: The statement about Creedence Clearwater Revival contains a factual error. The quoted lyrics are from ‘Proud Mary’ (1969), not from Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1883). This sentence should be deleted or substantially revised for accuracy.”
With that kind of intelligence, Claude can significantly streamline your editing workflow. Nevertheless, Claude should be viewed as a supportive tool rather than a substitute for a human mind. Human oversight remains essential for critical or complex editing tasks.
You really need to try MarkMyWords to understand how useful, helpful, and powerful this kind of editing can be. You can use the program for 45 days free of charge, and you don't need a subscription to Claude! Learn more and get started here:
