Natural language processing has developed over the years at a massive rate. As a result, 70% of enterprises have already implemented or are in the process of implementing NLP-based technologies.

NLP is basically a form of Artificial Intelligence that allows machines or computers to understand the natural human language. This technology can understand large heaps of human written text along with the contextual meaning of the sentences. 

This technology has made a far-reaching change in the writing industry. Content writers are using all sorts of tools and software to enhance the quality of their writing. In order to understand how this all came to be, let’s take a step back and understand the roots of this NLP technology.

Historical Background of NLP and the Writing Industry

The first variants of NLP go all the way back to the 1950s when it was a technology that was meant to translate languages during the World War. Over the years, this technology got advanced until a few systems were created, like ELIZA and SHRDLU. These natural language processing systems were able to make a limited conversation with humans.

The basis of the current NLP technology is from the 1980s, when the machine learning approach was introduced. Today, chatbots can make meaningful conversations with humans and provide solutions to their problems. If you want to learn more about the details of NLP’s evolution, click here.

Now let’s help you understand how this NLP technology is changing the fate of the writing industry.

Key NLP Technologies Transforming the Writing Industry

NLP is further divided into categories or technologies. Here is a list of these technologies and how they are impacting the writing industry.

1. Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis is an NLP-based technology. It allows a computer to understand how users express emotions through text. This technology can understand the tone of writing. This type of text analysis has many applications in the writing industry.

Tools that are able to analyze the sentiments of a person through the text are very often used by content writers. Such tools are able to examine the tone of your writing and suggest appropriate.

For example, when you are trying to write a promotional product description, you have to use an authoritative and compelling tone. Instead, you use words like “maybe” or “might.” This gives off the wrong impression. NLP-powered tools and software can identify such mistakes. Some of them also provide suggestions on how these mistakes could be fixed. A good example of such a tool is Grammarly.

2. Text Summarization

Text summarization is another aspect of NLP that is used by people in the writing industry. This technology analyzes large pieces of text and shortens or summarizes them into a small passage. 

This is possible only if the technology is able to understand the contextual meaning behind every sentence and phrase.

Nowadays, people have an extremely short time span. That’s why many creators provide a summary of their content in the end. This allows content consumers to understand the main points of the writing. 

Due to such limited attention spans of users, the need for text summarization technology has increased. It is being used by various people, such as article writers and marketers.

3. Machine Translation

Machine translation is one of the oldest types of natural language processing. It is a process that uses NLP to translate one language to another. Because of the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence in this process, the translated text also matches the context of the original text.

Traditional translation might convert one language to another literally. However, in many cases, the exact literal translation actually has an altered meaning. Contextual translation, on the other hand, is accurate. 

The applications of NLP Machine Translation are massive in the writing field. For example, many articles are now available in more than one language. You can convert your writing into another language and publish it. The most popular tool for such translation is Google Translate.

4. Grammar Checking

Grammar checking is the most commonly used NLP technology. Grammar errors are made even by people that are writing content in their first language. This happens because there are some grammatical rules that can be ignored in spoken language. However, the same mistakes can not be overlooked in text form. 

Unless you have high knowledge and a firm grasp on all the technical aspects of writing, you are going to take help from grammar checkers. This technology is incorporated in online tools that take input in the form of text and then detect all the errors in it.

Writers study these errors and make appropriate changes to them. In this way, if used correctly, grammar-checking technology serves two purposes. One, it eliminates grammatical errors in your writing, and two, it helps you learn from your mistakes.

5. Paraphrase Generation

Paraphrase Generation is another branch of natural language processing. It involves transforming a piece of text into an altered variant that has the same meaning but different words, tone, and structure. 

This has a huge advantage over manual paraphrasing in terms of time efficiency and quality. The majority of content writers don’t have such a diverse vocabulary that they would know multiple synonyms for every word. NLP-based paraphrasing does not have such restrictions.

This technology has become a part of various writing applications and online tools. In the following image, an example of how an AI paraphraser modifies text is given:

Benefits of NLP in the Writing Industry

Now that we have explained a few types of NLP and their applications, let’s look into how this technology benefits the writing industry.

1. Improved Productivity and Efficiency

NLP allows writers to focus on the things that actually matter. For example, writers can now write without worrying about the grammar and readability of their content. They can just use NLP tools to fix such flaws in their writing later.

This is useful because it allows users can express their ideas and imaginations in the most effective way.

A piece of content that would otherwise require almost a week for composing, editing, and finalizing can be crafted in a day with the help of NLP technology.

2. Access to a Wider Audience Through Translation

The machine translation aspect of NLP can help writers reach a wider audience through their content. The same content topic can attract an audience from different geographical regions. If you are writing about such a topic, then it can be a good idea to translate it and publish it in more than one language.

In this way, a piece of writing can attract much larger traffic compared to if the writing was only in one language.

3. Personalized Content Generation

NLP is able to understand the intent of a writing. Similarly, it is also able to copy the writing patterns. Nowadays, you can use chatbots to create personalized content. You just have to tell the bot to write something like you would tell an actual content writer, and the result will be generated in a few moments.

Even though the level of creativity and the sentimental connection won’t be the same as actual human-written content, it will still be very close. You can make minor changes to NLP-generated text to make it completely human-like.

Tools and software can now even understand the preferences of your audience and help you create content accordingly. 

4. Improved Quality Control

The quality of writing is determined by the value it provides to the reader. Aspects such as the readability of content add to the value of writing. These aspects can be controlled by NLP technology.

For example, the paraphrasing generation technology can rewrite text to make it more appealing or easier to read. Similarly, sentiment analysis can help you improve the tone or voice of your content. 

Conclusion

The early versions of Natural Language Processing weren’t related to the writing industry. However, with the gradual advancements in this technology, it started to have a major impact on this industry. Now, we can use this technology to optimize and edit our content for various purposes. It saves time, effort, and resources for writers.