Whether you’re in marketing or sales, you know it has to be punchy if you write copy for business purposes. Strong sentences sell, which means paying careful attention to style, tone, and language.
But what if you’re not a natural writer?
Don’t panic. A new Google Workspace update can help you fake it ‘til you make it with an ‘assistive writing’ feature that advises on how to polish your paragraphs.
How Google Docs assistive writing can help
The new assistive writing feature offers suggestions on:
- Word choice: To encourage more dynamic or contextually relevant wording
- Conciseness: Highlighting ways to make your phrases more concise
- Inclusive language: Suggesting more inclusive words or phrases
- Word warnings: Prompting you to reconsider potentially inappropriate words
- Active voice: Warning you when you stray into the passive voice
Copywriters will especially appreciate the latter as even experienced writers struggle with switching from the passive voice to the active.
An active sentence is one where the subject does the action described by the verb. In a passive sentence, the subject has the action done to them. It’s the difference between ‘Joe made a deal’ and ‘Joe made the deal’.
This distinction matters - adopting a passive tone makes it more likely that readers will tune out before reaching the end of the sentence. By contrast, an active sentence grabs your attention, makes you want to read more, and has some momentum. If you’re writing anything for your business, that momentum is crucial in sales or marketing materials.
How to use assistive writing
Admins don’t need to do anything to switch on assistive writing - the program will be automatically integrated into Docs as it rolls out this spring. It can be disabled by users if necessary from the Google Docs toolbar (under ‘tools’ and ‘preferences’).
Suggestions will appear as you type, marked by a purple line under the text. Hovering over the line will produce a pop-up window with the suggested changes, which you can accept or reject.
The feature is available to all Business Standard Google Workspace accounts and Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, and Education Plus. To find out more, or integrate any Google products into your organization’s infrastructure, contact our team of Google-certified engineers and consultants. A Google Cloud Premier Partner, UpCurve Cloud, can help you streamline your entire tech stack, so your team has the tools it needs to become more productive and efficient.
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