Research writing is a type of writing that focuses on explaining existing evidence, i.e., garnered via research, to a specific audience.
For example, in a piece of research writing, you could study some evidence and create some arguments based on it – the purpose of which would be to convince the readers of a particular thought or idea.
Unlike other types of writing, research writing has to be done in a very specific and careful way. The research itself, the writing, the post-writing editing, etc., all have to be handled meticulously.
Using AI – in the form of online tools and software – can prove to be helpful during this entire process. If you want to know how you can utilize said tools and software for this purpose, you’re at the right place. Let’s take a look at it together.
AI tools can be helpful in understanding the research material
If you want your research writing content to be proper, you first need to properly understand the research material itself. Moreover, surprisingly, this is where AI tools can play a helping role.
We say “AI tools” here, but we mean something a bit more specific. We refer to the generative AI writing assistants that are very popular nowadays, such as ChatGPT and Bard by Google.
What you can do here, to be exact, is get your research material, i.e., something that you are having trouble understanding, and put it into the writing tool. After that, you can request the tool to give you a simplified explanation.
This is something that we ourselves have done on numerous occasions. In addition, it works wonders.
Consider this example:
AI tools can help you in simplifying your writing for better readability
As we explained above, the purpose of research writing is to explain something to an audience based on researched evidence.
As such, it makes sense to understand that the content itself should be readable and comprehendible.
AI tools can help you in this regard as well.
There are some online tools that can process your provided content and then rephrase it using different words while keeping the meaning intact. This process is called paraphrasing, and the tools that do it are called paraphrasing tools.
If you take care to pick an advanced paraphrasing tool, the changes it makes will not only alter the content but also improve it, i.e., with regard to flow and readability.
Here is an example to show you what we mean. This is a passage that we’ve written with the deliberate intention of being hard to read:
“The sesquipedalian nature of the diction is, in many cases, the reason behind its inexplicable convolution. The logic proffered for the seemingly prolix composition is the usual and untenable: the passion for sounding complicated.”
As you can see, it is a linguistic disaster in the above example.
But if we use a paraphrase tool, it becomes so much more readable. For improving readability of this text, we will use the paraphrasing tool offered by Editpad and rephrase this example:
As you can see the result in the image above and paraphrased text, which mentioned below:
“In many cases, the exaggerated nature of the wording is responsible for its inexplicable curvature. The logic behind this seemingly long article is painfully familiar: the desire to appear complicated.”
We can see there are a few deviations from the context in some places; the changes made by the AI paraphraser make text more readable for readers and easy to understand.
AI tools can help in proofreading your research writing
As is the case with other types of writing, proofreading is also an important step that you have to take once you’re done with your research content.
The purpose of proofreading is to find and eliminate errors and imperfections in your content. And since there are different types of errors and imperfections that can potential exist in written content, the process of proofreading is multifaceted.
Let’s take a look at some of the major parts of proofreading along with how AI can help with them.
Grammar and spelling checking
Grammar and spelling errors are easy to make, and everyone makes them. However, they are can be highly damaging to the content vis-à-vis integrity and quality.
While finding and removing these types of errors is important in every type of content, it becomes even more so when it comes to academic content like research writing.
Normally, an easy way to find and remove these types of errors is to simply read the content a couple of times. The errors can be easily spotted and fixed during these sessions.
But, with AI tools, you can make things quicker and more thorough. AI grammar checkers are online tools that are specifically made to find grammar and spelling errors in the provided content. You can use them and save up a lot of time.
Plagiarism checking
Looking for plagiarism is also an important part of the proofreading process. Plagiarism, like grammar errors, can sneak inside your content.
People usually associate plagiarism with being a deliberate act – which it usually is. But it can occur even unintentionally.
For example, if someone writes a sentence that exists in the exact same way already somewhere on the Internet, it would get counted as “plagiarized” even if it is original from the person’s perspective.
Just as AI is utilized in tools like grammar checkers, etc., it is also utilized in plagiarism checkers. The AI element helps these tools in finding plagiarism more effectively. You can, in this way, utilize AI to check your research writing for plagiarism.
Readability issues
Other than word choices and long sentences (which was pretty much what we discussed in the heading pertaining to readability above), there are other readability issues that can damage the quality of your research writing.
For example, if there is excessive passive voice in the content, it can spoil the way everything is explained. The same goes for things like lack of transition words excessive adverbs, etc.
There are AI-based readability checkers available on the Internet that specifically check the given content for issues like this. You can use them during the proofreading process and fix the errors that they point out.
Conclusion
If you use AI tools in the ways that we have described above, you will be able to make your research writing easier, quicker, and smoother. A lot of things that these tools can help you with are the things that otherwise take up a lot of time and effort.
We hope you learned something new here that will help you out the next time you have to write something of the sort.
