Have you ever tried a tool that’s supposed to help you improve your texts, only to realize that while it’s an advanced tool, it doesn’t meet your specific needs? Well, the reason for this is that different tools have different focuses and therefore strengths, making each of them ideal for a particular stage of writing. 

We rarely think consciously about the different phases of the writing process because they happen naturally and the steps flow seamlessly into one another. However, if you understand them well, you can choose the tools that best suit your needs without unnecessary trial and error.

Technically, the stages of writing can be broken down into many detailed steps. For the sake of simplicity, however, they can be divided into three main categories: 

• Drafting
• Editing
• Proofreading

Let us first talk about drafting.

1- Drafting

This is the stage where we sometimes find ourselves staring at a blank page on the screen, wanting to write a piece of content, but our mind is as blank as the Google Docs page we have open.

Or we look at our notes that are piling up and promise ourselves that we will soon sit down to organize them and finally finish the work we are supposed to submit.

We are still in the drafting phase when we have nothing but an outline of the main points in front of us or our initial content looks so sloppy that it’s hard to imagine how it will turn into anything good in the end.

Drafting

Organizing ideas Developing main points Writing initial content

2- Editing

Next comes the editing stage, where you take a closer look at your first draft. You review the structure of the content to ensure that the details are communicated in the right order, within the right sections, and in the right tone—formal, informal, etc.

It’s also the phase when you revise the sentences, especially in terms of word choice, to match your style of writing and tone of voice better. You check that your ideas have been expressed clearly enough and that there is a smooth transition between paragraphs.

When editing, you shorten long sentences that are difficult to read, you break them into shorter chunks, or move the last part of a sentence to the beginning to improve the reading flow. 

If a sentence is too complicated, you change the wording to make it easier to understand. You change the words that have been repeated unnecessarily and remove redundant words. You rewrite, check, and revise a sentence and, if necessary, rewrite it again.

While grammar and spelling can be corrected here, the main aim is to refine the content, focusing on the message itself and the way we want to convey it. You don’t want to be distracted or slowed down by obsessing over less important details that can be fixed later.

Editing

Revising for clarity and flow Improving structure, style, and tone Enhancing readability and conciseness

3- Proofreading

You are ready for proofreading when you are sure that you have formulated the content you wanted to write as detailed, comprehensive, and coherent as possible based on the outline you came up with in the drafting phase.

This is where you “polish” your text with small adjustments to create consistent, error-free content.

You do a proper grammar and spell check, add the missing period or remove the unnecessary comma, depending on your Oxford comma and other punctuation preferences. 

You make sure that you have used either British or American English throughout and not a mix of both. According to how formal or informal you want to be, you add or remove contractions. 

If you’ve spelled the number 9 as “nine” in one sentence but used the numeral in another instance, you make them consistent. If you have put the percent sign (%) before the number in one sentence and after it in another, you make their use consistent, and so on.

This is the stage where you basically show your special respect for the reader and try to improve their reading experience as much as possible, not only in terms of content but also visually.

Proofreading

Checking grammar and spelling Reviewing punctuation Ensuring formatting consistency

InstaText for in-depth editing

Thanks to technology, many steps of the writing process have been automated and we no longer have to spend endless hours on the first draft, rewrite the text a dozen times to improve readability, or strain our eyes to spot a typo. 

But as mentioned at the beginning, the tools designed to help us improve our written content have different strengths and limitations, depending on the type of user and the use case they are intended to serve.

See also: ChatGPT vs. InstaText vs. Grammarly: Why they are NOT the same for writing 

This brings us to the question: In which phase of writing is InstaText most helpful?

The short answer is: Editing 

InstaText is an editing assistant built on advanced language technologies, but it does not utilize generative AI. 

Simply put, this means that it is not intended to generate content from scratch, but to analyze and improve texts. 

InstaText is therefore the ideal choice for anyone—whether a native speaker or not—who wants to create original content and needs to edit their texts thoroughly without the output being considered AI-generated, which is not permitted in many contexts, e.g. for publication purposes.

See also: Why InstaText is your best bet for getting published in any journal

InstaText offers you an in-depth editing experience where you can rewrite your texts in terms of clarity, readability, flow, structure, style, tone, conciseness and the like through interactive feedback that puts you in control. 

The editing experience with InstaText is enhanced by features like an advanced personal dictionary and options for formal or informal tone and British or American English. With these features, you can easily customize the editing process to suit your needs and preferences. 

Editing is considered the most important phase of writing because, so to speak, it puts flesh on the bones of your unrefined ideas.

This makes InstaText the preferred choice for those writing for an informed audience where the focus is on original content, clarity, precision, and effective communication. This includes writing a research paper, a thought leadership article, a journalistic piece, or similar content.

InstaText for proofreading

The strength of InstaText lies in its editing functions, but it goes beyond this and proofreads your text for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. 

While we do not claim that InstaText’s proofreading capabilities are as good as those of dedicated grammar checkers, we are confident that with a quick manual review, most users will be able to turn the output into a decent copy ready for publication.

And the fact that many reputable publications, scientific and non-scientific, offer free proofreading services makes this less of an issue.But again, choosing the right tool depends on the PURPOSE, the PEOPLE, and the PLACES our writing is intended for, as well as the PHASE of the writing process in which we need the most help. And of course you can use a mix of different tools if you want to achieve even better results.

If you’re already using InstaText, make the most of it by learning about our features, extensions, and integrations. If you’re new to our tool, read our FAQs and try it out for free to see how it meets your editing and proofreading needs.

See also: InstaText Editor

Feature/Aspect	ChatGPT	InstaText	Grammarly
Tool type	Drafting assistant	Editing assistant	Writing assistant
Primary use	Idea generation, drafting	Editing, proofreading	Proofreading
Best stage	Drafting	Editing	Proofreading
Editing depth	General suggestions	Deep editing (error corrections + clarity, readability, and style improvement)	Error corrections (grammar, punctuation, tone, conciseness)
Retaining writer’s voice	May dilute original tone	Maintains and enhances writer’s tone and style	Maintains tone but focuses more on correctness
Content considered AI-generated	Yes	No (fully respects writer’s authorship)	Yes, if used extensively for content generation
Suitable for publication where AI-generated content is restricted/not allowed	No	Yes (scientific and non-scientific)	No, if used extensively for content generation
Best for	General users, content creators, marketers, freelancers	Academics, professionals, journalists, editors, students, general users, copywriters, and content creators	General users, businesses, students, professionals, copywriters, and content creators
Real-time suggestions	Yes (conversational)	Yes (real-time improvements in editing stage)	Yes (mainly for grammar, tone, and clarity)
Customization options	Yes (primarily prompt-based)	Yes (personal dictionary, tone, dialect, etc.)	Yes (tone, dialect, etc.)
Platform compatibility	Web-based, integrated via API	Web-based, browser extensions, multiple applications (Gmail, Google Docs, Word, etc.)	Web-based, browser extensions, multiple applications (Gmail, Slack, Google Docs, Word, etc.)
Privacy	Stores processed texts (with privacy options)	Never stores processed texts	Stores processed texts (with deletion options)
Free & paid membership	Yes	Yes	Yes