Make Writing Sound Less Like AI

The Editorial Checklist

1. Cut the assistant preamble. Remove "it is important to note," "in today's fast-paced world," "let's explore," and other setup lines that do not add information.
2. Replace vague grandeur with specific nouns. "Landscape," "tapestry," "realm," and "paradigm" usually hide the actual subject. Name the product, customer, policy, bug, or tradeoff.
3. Break the sentence templates. Watch for repeated "not X but Y," "The result? X," and "No X. No Y. Just Z." patterns. Keep one if it earns its place; delete the chorus.
4. Vary paragraph shape. AI prose often stacks paragraphs of the same length with the same topic-support-transition rhythm. Combine, split, shorten, or let one paragraph end bluntly.
5. Use formatting only when it carries meaning. Remove bold-first bullets, decorative emoji, and emphasis on every key phrase. If everything is emphasized, nothing is.
6. Check density, not single words. A draft is not AI-sounding because it has one em dash. It starts to read that way when punctuation, phrasing, tone, and structure all point in the same direction.

For Editors, Teachers, And Builders

Editors and marketers can use this as a quality filter before publishing. Teachers and students can use it to talk about style without pretending a detector has courtroom-grade certainty. AI builders can use it as a regression checklist for generated copy, documentation, and product surfaces.

For a phrase-level scan, use the common ChatGPT phrases list. For the full pattern map, start with signs of AI writing.