What Is Human-Written Content?

Human-Written Content: The Basics

Human-written content is text that a single person creates based on their understanding, word by word, with their name on it. The good test is not a stylistic one. It is whether you can identify a person for whom you can ask them why a particular sentence is included in the document and if their response is either a source, a decision, or if they included the sentence as a part of an argument.

Being written by a human eliminates the need for uncited authors, but that does not mean unassisted. It is possible for an author to make use of many resources, almost all of which involve some form of human interaction (i.e. interview subjects, textual sources, editors, others). A piece might pass through many hands, but the output is still the work of someone. What the phrase refers to is a machine writing the prose, be it the prose of a first draft or a revision of another’s first draft.

The differentiation becomes tricky when vendors use passive voice to describe their processes. Stating that a document was written and edited to a high standard does not imply that a human wrote the document. A direct question will be more useful. Whose work is this? What did that person use to do that work? A vague answer to a simple question is typically the answer.

• Which named writer produced this draft, and can I reach them?
• What references did you use, and could you provide a full list?
• Was any part drafted, expanded, or rewritten with the aid of software?
• Who was the editor, and what was the extent of their changes?
• What would you show a client who challenged a claim in it?

Why Human-Written Content Matters

A language model is designed to fill in gaps by drawing from everything related to a topic. This means that a language model is effectively summarizing hundreds of resources in order to fit a certain word count. That can be extremely useful for condensing information. This means a summary compiled with the help of a language model will be relatively close to the mean of everything written on the topic. However, simple statistics tell us that, assuming a unimodal distribution, if something is close to the mean of the population, it potentially has very little unique information. That means if your document needs to contain something that isn’t in the mean, such as your biggest competitor’s most commonly raised objection, the reason last quarter was bad, something on page nine of the contract that is an exception, then a language model is not going to help you.

Another difference only becomes apparent when pressured. When a writer makes a mistake, they can insert where they made the mistake and what they misread. This allows for a quick correction, which takes under ten minutes maximum. This cannot be done with a machine’s writing. There is no history for a passage, which means correcting it is, unfortunately, writing the entire thing over again. It is also possible that the same error is a couple of paragraphs later.

All of this points toward human authorship being insufficient on its own. People will file weak work, miss deadlines, and regurgitate information they read from the first page of search engine results. We do not want to rely on human writing as a safeguard against the things mentioned earlier. It seems like a simple measure to check the edits our employees make, but it’s just as important as the hiring itself.

How Articled Approaches Human-Written Content

Before ever seeing a client brief, applicants are approved by a reviewer and then submit a sample of their work. Each applicant receives an entire brief, which the organization offers on a first-come, first-served basis. This results in writers being able to maintain a consistent, uniform voice throughout the brief. They are paid $10 for 100 words, or 100% of the writing price. The additional 1% paid by the client is used by the organization to cover administrative costs.

Verifying writers is a human job here. An applicant’s sample is reviewed, and questions are asked about their work. A reviewer looks for the puzzle pieces that are left behind when rewriting tools are used (e.g. terms that shift meaning, quotes that don’t match their source, discrepancies in the cadence of the writing). Applicants who pass sign a form stating what the standard is and what the consequence would be if this standard is broken.

Two revisions are allowed for a total of fourteen days, which should be enough time for a stakeholder to read and provide useful feedback. © will transfer to you upon completion and no attribution is required. Deliveries take up to three days, and we would rather be honest about that than mislead you with an hour estimation.

1. No account, no login. Send brief by form.
2. A writer, verified by us, will read the sources and come back with questions.
3. They draft it all in one pass and revise it all against their own notes.
4. Claims, brief coverage, and voice consistency are checked by an editor.
5. Twelve platforms are run, then file and reports reach you by email.

Human-Written Content FAQs