Proofread a commercially sensitive document without changing what it promises
The proposal goes out this afternoon and someone asks for a quick proofread. Its qualifiers — “aim to”, “up to”, “subject to” — are doing useful work, and a polished paragraph can conceal quite a lot of enthusiasm about what you're willing to deliver.
What you'll make
a checked list of small corrections to one commercial document, with any possible change of meaning held for the person who owns the wording.
What you'll need
the original document, a working copy and permission to use its contents (including commercial terms) in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot at work. An ordinary chat is enough. Allow ten minutes for a short section.
Example result.
1. Para 3.2, final sentence: "suport" → "support". MECHANICAL CANDIDATE: apparent spelling error. Check "support team" is the intended name.
2. Para 3.2, service and onboarding wording: no change proposed. Preserve "aim to", "working hours", the access condition, "Indicative", "up to" and "expected to".A proofread checks how a document is written, not whether its prices, promises or legal terms are right. So you ask for individual changes you can check, not a rewritten document.
1. Mark the wording you must preserve
Choose a short section for the first pass, with its heading and paragraph numbers so suggestions can be found again. Include any nearby definition that a phrase such as “working hours” depends on; if the definition isn’t available, say so rather than letting the assistant supply one.
Before opening the chat, list the dates, amounts, quantities, responsibilities, conditions and exclusions that must stay unchanged. Include qualifiers such as “aim to”, “estimated”, “up to” and “subject to”. They may be deliberate limits, even when a writing assistant could make the sentence sound more confident without them.
For a document under negotiation, agree who can accept changes. A proofread shouldn’t quietly become a new offer.
Why this works: the assistant can’t tell from tone which words are deliberate. Your list tells it.
What you should see: a short extract with its numbering, plus a list of protected terms and the name of the person who decides on meaning changes.
2. Ask for proposals you can check one at a time
Proofread this extract in UK English. Return a numbered change list, not a rewritten document.
Purpose and reader: [purpose and reader]
Wording to preserve: [protected terms]
Relevant definitions: [definitions, or "not supplied"]
For each proposal give the location, exact original wording, exact replacement and reason. Label it MECHANICAL CANDIDATE or MEANING REVIEW. MECHANICAL CANDIDATE means an apparent spelling, spacing, grammar or punctuation repair with no intended change of meaning. MEANING REVIEW covers anything that may change a commitment, condition, scope, defined term, number, date or qualifier. If uncertain, use MEANING REVIEW and explain why.
Preserve deliberate qualifiers. If a sentence is ambiguous, flag it with no replacement. Do not add, merge, reorder or remove obligations. If there is nothing to correct, say so.
EXTRACT:
[extract][purpose and reader] is what the document is for and who reads it; [protected terms] is your list from step 1; [definitions] is any definition the extract relies on; [extract] is the text with its headings and paragraph numbers.
Why this works: the exact original and replacement make each proposal checkable. “If there is nothing to correct, say so” stops the task requiring a change for its own sake.
What you should see: a short numbered list, perhaps with several lines that need no edit at all.
3. Check each change, including its label
Find each original phrase in the document. If it isn’t there, reject the item: the assistant may have misquoted. Read the replacement in the whole sentence, with any definition or cross-reference it relies on.
Ask one question: does it change who does what, by when, for how much, in which circumstances? Check negations and small scope words: “only”, “unless”, “and”, “or”, “at least”, “up to”. A comma can change the scope of an exception, and a capital letter can change a defined term. The labels help you sort; they don’t certify anything.
If one item has altered a qualifier or quoted text that isn’t there:
Recheck proposal [number] against this exact passage: [original text]. Your proposal changes or misquotes the wording. Withdraw it, report the exact wording and say whether any correction is needed without changing its scope. Do not rewrite the rest of the list.[number] is the proposal; [original text] is the passage copied from your document.
Why this works: a narrow correction fixes one item without regenerating the whole list.
What you should see: every accepted item matches the document word for word, and anything uncertain has moved to meaning review.
4. Apply the accepted items by hand
Make the accepted edits in the working copy yourself, with tracked changes. Don’t ask the assistant to produce the final document from the list: once it regenerates the full text, you’re back to comparing two long documents.
Keep the change list, marked accepted, rejected or referred. Then compare the finished copy with the original using your editor’s comparison tool, and check numbering, tables, footnotes and cross-references separately; text pasted into a chat may not keep them.
Why this works: hand edits mean only the changes you accepted reach the document.
What you should see: a working copy whose comparison shows only your accepted edits, ready for the usual approval.
Check the result
- Every accepted edit appears in the comparison, and nothing else changed.
- Every protected term from step 1 is still there, word for word.
- No MECHANICAL item touches an obligation, number, date, condition or qualifier.
The usual failure: the assistant labels a strengthening edit as mechanical. “We aim to respond” becomes “We respond”, filed as tidier grammar. Spot it when a list from a document full of obligations comes back almost entirely MECHANICAL: that’s a failure to notice, not a clean bill of health.
Several of those changes alter wording inside obligations, dates, quantities or conditions. Re-examine every item and reclassify any change that touches an obligation, number, date, condition, exclusion or hedging word as MEANING REVIEW. List the reclassified items with the reason. Do not propose new changes.Then read it yourself anyway. A second answer from the same model is another draft, not a second opinion.
Worked example: a service level gets promoted
Fictional example. The proposal owner has asked for all service commitments and qualifiers to be preserved.
3.2 Support
We aim to respond to priority-one incidents within four working hours of notification, subject to the client providing access to the affected environment. Indicative onboarding covers up to five named users and is expected to complete within the first month. Please contact the suport team for access instructions.The first list returned six items, five of them labelled MECHANICAL CANDIDATE as “tighter wording”:
- “within four working hours” → “within four hours”. Removing “working” turns a business-hours commitment into a round-the-clock one.
- “We aim to respond” → “We respond”. A target becomes a statement of fact.
- “subject to the client providing access…” → deleted as redundant. A condition on when the clock runs disappears.
- “Indicative onboarding covers up to five named users” → “Onboarding covers five named users”. The estimate becomes a commitment, and a ceiling becomes a quantity.
- “is expected to complete within the first month” → “completes within the first month”. An expectation becomes a deadline.
- “suport” → “support”. A real typo.
- The failure. Every suggestion is reasonable editing: shorter and more confident, which is what “proofread” seemed to ask for. Together they move a hedged support paragraph into something much harder to deliver, and the clean version announces none of it.
- The repair. The reclassification prompt moved items 1–5 to MEANING REVIEW. The owner rejected all five, leaving the list in the example result.
- The useful result is smaller than a rewrite. One typo fixed; every condition still in place.
Try it
Watch the promise change
Switch between the weak rewrite and the checked correction. Highlighted words carry the decision.
Source wording
We aim to respond within four working hours, subject to client access. Indicative onboarding covers up to five named users. Contact the suport team.
Weak rewrite
We respond within four hours and onboard five users. Contact the support team.
Task kit for this job: Download (ZIP) · Reusable instructions
Go deeper
Optional training: Keep a short list of protected commitments
For a longer document, ask for a draft list of what a proofread should preserve, then check it against the whole document, including schedules and tables.
From this document, list commitments and conditions that a proofread should preserve. Give each location and a short exact quote. Include dates, quantities, prices, exclusions, approval steps and hedging words. Do not assess legal effect. Mark missing definitions and ambiguous cross-references, and say which parts you could not read.It’s a review aid, not proof that every obligation was found. In a quotation, the protected terms might be currency, VAT treatment and validity dates; in a service description, exclusions and acceptance criteria. For a full responsibilities extraction, see the contract responsibilities guide.
Optional training: Compare the final copy after several editors
Run your editor’s full comparison first so you see every difference. An assistant can help explain individual changes, but shouldn’t decide what to leave out of the comparison.
Explain these differences between the agreed and current versions. For each, identify any possible change to a figure, date, responsibility, qualifier, condition or defined term. Keep the original and revised wording side by side. Flag uncertainty for the document owner. Do not declare the documents equivalent.A change outside the differences you pasted stays outside this check. When comparing versions is the main job, use compare contract versions.
Optional training: Make it a house rule
Save the step 2 prompt as a text template, kept separate from any client document, and add the decision rule at the end:
Acceptance: MECHANICAL CANDIDATE items may be accepted by the document author.
MEANING REVIEW items go to the named owner of that commitment: [name].Those two lines matter more than the classification scheme. Labels only help if somebody has agreed who may accept which pile. The most useful reusable instruction is often the name of the person who must decide.