Walk On

This sentence jumped out at me while I was line editing a short article:

Going on a San Francisco City Guides tour made this person feel he was hearing about his own immigrant story and made him think that leading these tours would be great fun—but challenging—a great iterative process to refine his presentation skills in front of random groups and search for stories about the Chinese experience in America.

I loved that it mentioned SF City Guides! It’s a terrific organization with informative walking tours. But as a copy editor, my job was to make the sentence more accessible to the reader. Here’s how I approached this task.

First, I wanted to keep the upbeat tone. I also wanted to retain the ideas of telling stories, leading walking tours, developing presentation skills, and learning more about a culture’s immigrant story. I wanted to remove “San Francisco City Guides” because it made the story too specific for my client. Here's what I settled on:

He realized that leading walking tours was a fun and challenging way to refine his group presentation skills; he also loved searching for then sharing stories of the Chinese immigrant experience in the US.

This new version is thirty-five words rather than fifty-eight—significantly tighter. But I’d lost the enthusiasm.

I then put the original sentence into two AI programs to see what they would come up with. (I have subscriptions to both programs and client permission to use them.) The first AI wrote:

Taking a San Francisco City Guides tour connected him deeply to his immigrant roots. It inspired him with the idea of guiding these tours himself, seeing it as a rewarding chance to enhance his presentation skills while delving into the rich narratives of the Chinese American experience.

This version has forty-seven words, but like my rewrite, it is utterly meh. Further, delving, a terrific word, is not an adequate substitution for searching. However, “Chinese American experience” flows better than my “Chinese immigrant experience.”

The second AI wrote:

Taking a San Francisco City Guides tour made him feel connected to his own immigrant story. It sparked the idea that leading these tours would be both enjoyable and challenging—a valuable opportunity to refine his presentation skills while exploring the stories of the Chinese experience in America.

This version has forty-eight words and is peppy. I love the word spark. But exploring misses the point as much as delving.

In the end, I combined all three versions:

Taking a walking tour connected him to his culture’s immigrant story and sparked an idea: leading tours himself would be a fun and challenging way to refine his group presentation skills while researching and sharing stories of the Chinese American experience.

Forty-four words with a fun tone and improved clarity.

Many copy editors are cautious about using AI, which seems to them to be an ethically questionable way to work. But I like to use AI collaboratively because it makes me a better editor. I am enjoying the stroll through this new world.