Short answer: to keep keywords and terms unchanged when you rewrite a text, decide which ones must survive before you start, and write them down in the exact form the text uses. Then either tell the rewriting tool to leave them alone or use a tool that locks them. Finally, search the result for every item on the list. Instructions alone can fail, so the search is the step you shouldn’t skip.
This guide covers what belongs on the list, why exact form matters, how a paraphrase can change your meaning without you noticing, and how to use phrase protection in humai.
Why rewriting tools replace your terms
A paraphrasing tool has one job: say the same thing with different words. It usually can’t tell which words you chose loosely and which you chose because no other word will do. To a model, “time tracking” and “hour logging” look like the same idea, so it may treat the swap as a success.
Here’s what that costs in different kinds of writing:
- SEO and marketing. The phrase people search for disappears from the page it was meant to describe.
- Academic work. “Median” becomes “average”, and “working memory” becomes “short-term memory”. In a marker’s eyes those are different things.
- Technical writing. A CSV export becomes a “spreadsheet export”, and a reader looks for an option that doesn’t exist.
- Contracts and policies. A defined term such as “Effective Date” must stay identical everywhere, or its definition may no longer clearly apply.
- Brands and names. Product names, course titles and people’s names shouldn’t be reworded at all.
What belongs on your list
Protect words where a synonym would change the meaning or defeat the purpose of the text. Go through the draft and mark:
- Target keywords, one main phrase per page plus the few close variants you actually rank for or want to rank for.
- Technical terms and measures: “self-efficacy”, “randomised controlled trial”, “median”.
- Defined terms from a contract, policy or thesis.
- Names and labels: products, plans, features, file formats, abbreviations.
Leave out ordinary words. If you lock every noun, the tool has little room left and the sentences will come back stiff. A short list of the terms that truly can’t change works better than a long one.
Exact form: the detail that catches people out
Exact-match protection does what its name says. A different ending, capital letter or hyphen makes it a different string. In humai, a phrase must also stand as a whole word, so it won’t match inside a longer word.
| You protect | The text says | Protected? |
|---|---|---|
| machine learning | machine learning | Yes |
| machine learning | Machine learning | No, the capital differs |
| machine learning | machine-learning | No, the hyphen differs |
| regression model | regression models | No, the plural is another form |
| API | APIs | No, it’s part of a longer word |
So search your own text before you build the list. If a term opens a sentence in one place and sits mid-sentence in another, add both forms. If you use singular and plural, add both.
Example: what protection changes
Take a short product description with three items that must stay: “project management software for small teams”, “time tracking” and “CSV”. Both rewrites below are illustrations written for this guide.
Original: “Choosing project management software for small teams is hard because most tools are built for large companies. A good option should offer time tracking and let you export data to CSV.”
Unprotected paraphrase: “Picking task-planning tools for little groups is tough, since most products target big firms. A decent choice should include hour logging and allow data exports in spreadsheet format.”
With the three phrases protected: “Picking project management software for small teams is tough, since most products target big firms. A decent choice should include time tracking and allow you to export data to CSV.”
The unprotected version reads fine and has three problems. The search phrase is gone, replaced by wording few people would type. “Hour logging” is no longer the name of the feature. “Spreadsheet format” is a factual change, because a CSV file and a spreadsheet file are different things, and a reader who needs CSV can’t tell whether this tool provides it. In the protected version, the words around the terms still changed (“picking”, “tough”, “big firms”), so it’s still a paraphrase. The terms are unchanged.
Phrase protection in humai
Protected phrases work in the humanizer, the paraphraser and the proofreader, and they’re open to everyone:
- Limits: 5 phrases on Free and 30 on Pro, each 2 to 80 characters long. Other forms count as separate phrases, so on Free pick the five that would do the most damage if changed.
- How it works: before the text reaches the AI model, each exact match is swapped for a placeholder. The model works around the placeholder, and humai puts your phrase back afterwards, exactly as you typed it.
- Warning: if the placeholders that come back don’t match the original count, humai restores what it can and tells you which phrases to check.
- Storage: your list is saved in your browser and sent with each request.
Only phrases that appear in the text in that exact form are protected. A phrase on your list with no exact match isn’t locked and isn’t reported as missing, because there was nothing to keep. That’s why it pays to compare the list with the draft first.
Check the result in four steps
Protection keeps a phrase intact. It can’t judge the sentence around it.
- Search for each term. Use Ctrl+F or Cmd+F for every item on your list and compare the count with your original.
- Read the words next to each term. The model sees a placeholder and not your phrase, so it may get the grammar around it wrong. Look for “a” before a vowel sound and for verbs that don’t agree with a plural term.
- Check sentence openings. Phrases return exactly as typed. If a rewrite moves “machine learning” to the start of a sentence, it stays lowercase until you fix it.
- Check the meaning. A term can survive in a sentence that now claims something else. Numbers, names and quotes need their own check, which our guide on whether an AI rewrite kept your facts walks through.
Two cautions: SEO and coursework
For SEO, keeping a keyword isn’t the same as repeating it. Google’s spam policies describe keyword stuffing as filling a page with keywords in an attempt to manipulate rankings, including repeating words until the text reads unnaturally. Protection preserves the occurrences you already have and adds none. If a page needs a term in more places, write those sentences because they help the reader.
For coursework, a locked term list helps your accuracy, and it doesn’t change the rules that apply to the work. Follow your university’s policy on AI tools, and disclose your use where it asks. Our guide to rewriting ChatGPT text in academic style shows how a term list fits into a wider editing method. If you also try humai’s AI detector, treat its score as an estimate, not a verdict. Protection isn’t built around it.
To try this on your own text, add your terms in the paraphraser before you run it, then search the result for each one.