Learning objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Identify the four feedback categories that Editorial Notes reviews
- Explain the difference between Editorial Notes and Editorial Updates and when each is appropriate
- Apply Editorial Notes to a draft post and assess the suggestions it returns
- Evaluate which suggestions to accept, modify, or decline based on your editorial goals
What editorial tools do
After you finish a draft, the WordPress AI Plugin offers two tools for reviewing and improving it: Editorial Notes and Editorial Updates.
Editorial Notes reads your post block by block and adds notes with suggestions covering four areas:
- Accessibility: Flags content that may be difficult for some readers to access or understand
- Readability: Identifies sentences or structures that could be clearer or more concise
- Grammar: Catches grammatical issues in the content
- SEO: Highlights opportunities to improve how search engines read and rank the post
Editorial Updates takes those notes one step further: instead of showing suggestions for you to review, it applies them directly to your content.
The two tools are designed to work in sequence. Most workflows benefit from running Editorial Notes first, reviewing what the AI flagged, and then deciding whether to apply individual changes yourself or use Editorial Updates to apply them all at once.
💡 Why this matters for you: Editing your own writing is genuinely difficult — it is hard to see what you have written with fresh eyes. Editorial Notes gives you a structured second pass that catches issues you might miss, without replacing your judgment about what to keep.
Using Editorial Notes
With the AI Plugin installed and a provider connected, open a draft post in the block editor. Look for the Editorial Notes option in the editor toolbar or sidebar.
When you run Editorial Notes, the plugin reviews each block in your post and adds inline notes where it has suggestions. Each note is labeled with its category (Accessibility, Readability, Grammar, or SEO), so you can quickly scan by type.
Review each note and decide what to do with it. You are not required to accept every suggestion. If a grammar note conflicts with a deliberate stylistic choice, you can dismiss it. If a readability note points to a sentence that is genuinely confusing, edit the block directly.
Note for hands-on practice: Editorial Notes requires a live connected AI provider and cannot be tested in WordPress Playground.
Using Editorial Updates
Once you have reviewed the notes from Editorial Notes, you can apply them manually block by block, or use Editorial Updates to apply all suggestions at once.
Editorial Updates is the faster path when you agree with most of the suggestions and want to apply them in bulk. After running it, review your post to confirm the changes match your intent. Because it applies suggestions automatically, it is worth reading through the post once more before publishing.
Note for hands-on practice: Editorial Updates also requires a live connected AI provider.
Applying editorial judgment
AI suggestions are a starting point, not a final answer. Editorial Notes and Editorial Updates are most useful when you treat them as a structured checklist rather than a set of instructions to follow without question.
A few things to keep in mind:
Readability suggestions may simplify language that you intentionally kept complex for a technical audience. Consider the suggestion in context.
SEO suggestions reflect general best practices, not your specific site strategy. Use them as a prompt to think about search intent, not as rules.
Grammar suggestions may flag stylistic choices such as sentence fragments used for emphasis, or second-person phrasing. Review these against your voice and the course’s writing conventions.
When in doubt, read the block aloud after applying a suggestion. If it sounds right, keep it. If it does not, revert it.
Key terms
| Term | Definition |
| Editorial Notes | An AI Plugin feature that reviews post content block-by-block and adds inline notes with suggestions across four categories: Accessibility, Readability, Grammar, and SEO. |
| Editorial Updates | An AI Plugin feature that automatically applies editorial notes to post content in bulk. |
| Block-by-block review | The process Editorial Notes uses to analyze each content block individually, rather than treating the full post as a single document. |
✅ Check your understanding
- You run Editorial Notes on a post and notice that several of the Readability suggestions would simplify language your audience expects. How would you approach deciding which notes to act on and which to dismiss?
- A colleague tells you they always use Editorial Updates immediately after Editorial Notes to save time. What would you suggest they consider before making that their standard workflow?
Up next: Practical: Review a draft with editorial tools lets you run these tools on a real draft and decide what to keep.