Your Credibility Lives in the Details

Picture this: You’re standing in front of a client, deck queued up, ready to present the big idea. And then someone spots it: a sentence on the intro slide that reads, ​“we’ll leverage cutting-edge synergies to unlock value across verticals,” which makes no sense to anyone (including the AI model that crafted it). Suddenly, the room isn’t focused on your vision. They’re questioning your competence.

I’ve been doing this work long enough to know that credibility doesn’t collapse in a dramatic failure; it seeps away in the smallest, missed-it-because-we-were-rushing-to-finish mistakes.

As a copy editor, I have an appreciation and respect for the invisible power and the impact of clean, concise language: when it’s perfect, no one notices; when it’s wrong, it’s all anyone can see.

Now, in the era of AI, a more subtle but no less insidious challenge problem has emerged. A piece of writing seems totally clean. But peek just below the surface, and you find out it has no substance.

The problem: Everyone owns copy, which means no one owns it

I’ve spent more than 20 years living in the margins of text. As the managing editor at publications from Playboy to Muscle & Fitness, I oversaw the production of hundreds of issues — every paragraph, every caption, every coverline, every page number.

My roles and titles have varied during my career, but one key responsibility is consistent: I am the last pair of eyes. It’s on me to be sure that what goes out the door is clean.

In many organizations, copy floats in a gray zone of shared responsibility. Everyone touches it, but no one is truly accountable for it. That’s how you wind up with ​“Final draft,” ​“Final draft 2.0,” ​“Final draft 2.5,” ​“FINAL final draft — for real this time.”

From there, in the crunch to hit a deadline, that necessary final check and polish can slip through the cracks. And if it does, even the most brilliant creative work can stumble.

My job is rarely glamorous. And by rarely, I mean never. In fact, it’s better if my work goes unnoticed.

There’s no applause when I fix a dangling modifier or effectively wield a semicolon, but if a small lapse were to (hypothetically) slip through, it becomes the center of attention. Copy precision is like efficient wiring in a building: you don’t notice it when it’s done right, but if one wire is crossed, the lights go out.

(So, maybe there should be some applause for that semicolon?)

The right word matters more than ever in the AI era

In the AI era, clarity has become a cultural signal. Brands can’t just say the right things, they have to say them in a way that shows rigor, care, and trustworthiness.

AI tools can catch spelling errors, tighten syntax, and even suggest alternate phrasings. But they can’t be accountable for intention or meaning. They lack the discernment and context to be the final authority on whether a phrasing could undermine credibility, or if a word choice might be off-brand.

This is particularly true with text that seems ancillary but is so essential to your message. Just as you work to get your message perfect, the same rigor should apply to headlines, subheads, and captions. Clunky axis labels and dense descriptions can undermine even the most beautiful and intuitive infographics. It’s precisely in the margins where the real care shows.

Let your precision be a differentiator

The word ​“proof” comes from the Latin probare, meaning ​“to test” or ​“to prove.” In the print era, a proof was literally a test impression of a page before it went to press — your last, ultimate, final chance to catch errors before they became permanent.

But proofreading is only the final part of the story, while copy editing is about strengthening the work at every level. It’s not just about catching stray commas and misspelled words; it’s about making sure the logic holds, the argument flows, and the words actually do justice to the big idea.

It’s proof that you’ve tested the work, checked twice, and thought about every word. Proof that you’ve safeguarded meaning as much as mechanics. Proof that you respect your audience enough to not waste their time and attention.

How GDP has responded

This is what I’ve come to believe:

• Credibility lives in the margins. Your audience won’t — and shouldn’t — notice the sentence you crafted perfectly. But they will notice the one with the misspelling or the argument that doesn’t hold together.
• Copy editing is substance, not cosmetics. Clean copy isn’t just about fixing typos. It’s about strengthening clarity, sharpening logic, eliminating redundancy, and ensuring the story connects. Proofreading is polish; editing is architecture.
• In the AI era, succinctness is a differentiator. AI models can easily generate as many words as you want — often more than you need. The real impact comes from refining content into something trustworthy, authoritative, and resonant without jargon or filler. Incisiveness and clarity will only become more important as the premium grows on real human communication.

To reflect these beliefs, we formalized a solution. We call it Final Final — our dedicated ​“substance check” service.

At the heart of Final Final is a thorough review that ensures all AI-generated content captures your brand’s voice and conveys your message concisely and effectively — to make sure your meaning comes through for human consumption. We also take copy editing beyond the traditional spelling/​grammar/​punctuation review, with an eye to word echoes and awkwardness, jargon and cliché, missing transitions, and ineffective signposting.

I lead that work because I’ve seen firsthand how costly the alternative can be — a missed typo, a headline that contradicts body copy, placeholder copy that somehow made it to print. Those aren’t just small errors, they’re hairline fractures in credibility. And once the crack is there, trust is gone.

Closing thought

The stakes of storytelling have never been higher. Technology is reshaping how brands communicate. Audiences are more skeptical, more distracted, more capable of — even enthusiastic about — calling out errors instantly.

When every slide, every word, every headline holds up under scrutiny, that’s when your story carries weight. That’s when the big idea gets the attention it deserves.

That’s the rule I live by. And it’s the one I think every brand will need to embrace in the AI era.

This piece first appeared in Story Is Everything and is republished with permission.

A former managing editor at publications like Playboy and Muscle & Fitness, Jared is GDP’s last line of defense against incorrect, unclear copy for all internal and client work.