Checking the answer before you send it
This is a draft
The steps below were written but have not yet been performed end to end on a real machine, and the time is planned rather than measured with a stopwatch. Four of the twelve checks are outstanding. The teaching is sound; treat the timings and the failure list as provisional. What that means
After this you will be able to
Run three checks on anything an AI tool writes for you.
Skip this if you already check every name, number and date against a source before anything goes out.
Before you start. Without looking back: what are the four things lesson 4 said to put in every request?
(The task as a verb, who it is for, how long it should be, and an example of what good looks like.)
These tools produce wrong answers in exactly the same confident tone as right ones. There is no tell in the writing. So the check has to be a habit rather than a feeling, and three passes cover almost everything.
The invented ones are usually the most plausible-looking sentence on the page.
What you need
- Something one of these tools wrote for you. If you have nothing, use the answer from lesson 4.
- No account needed.
The steps
- First pass: names, numbers, dates. Go through and mark every one. Check each against something that is not the tool.You should find that most are right and it takes under two minutes. The point is the one that is not.
- Second pass: read it as the person receiving it. Would they feel talked down to, or fobbed off?You should catch at least one phrase that is technically fine and lands badly. That is nearly always the apology sentence.
- Third pass: the ownership question. Would you be content to have written this yourself, and to be asked about any line in it next week?You should get a straight yes or no. A no means edit it, not send it with a caveat.
Try this one first
"Under the Housing Act 2004, landlords must respond to repair requests within 14 days."
Mark the Act, the year and the number. Check all three against the legislation, not against the tool. Confident, specific and legal-sounding is the exact shape an invented sentence takes.
If it goes wrong
You have nothing to check the facts against. Then that sentence does not go out. Cut it, or find the source first. "I could not verify it" is a reason to remove a claim, not a reason to hedge it.
It cites a source that sounds real. Look it up. Invented citations are common and they are convincing because they are built out of the shapes of real ones.
Checking takes longer than writing it yourself would have. Then for that task it is not worth using. That is a real and reasonable finding, and lesson 16 is a list of the situations where it applies.
Do today
Take the last thing one of these tools wrote for you. Run the three passes. Count what you find.
Where else this works. The three passes work on anything somebody else drafted for you — a colleague, an agency, a template you inherited.
Practice card for this lesson — one page of A4, no email address needed.
Did this work? If it did not, say what happened — hello@howtobedigital.com
Every failure anybody sends in ends up in the section above.
Checked by a person · not auto-published
Published 14 July 2026 · Last checked 14 July 2026
8 of 12 checks passed — see which four are outstanding
Covers: Skills England, Responsible and ethical AI foundation skills
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