AI drafts give themselves away with the same few words and sentence shapes. Here is what to cut, what to write instead, and a ten-minute routine to make a draft sound like you.
The short answer
AI drafts sound like AI because they are generic. The model knows nothing about you, your customer or the job unless you tell it, so it fills the gaps with safe, inflated wording. The quickest fix is to add something only you know: a name, a date, a price, or what was said last time. Then cut the stock words and sentence patterns listed below, take out em dashes if you would not normally use them, and read the draft aloud. Good instructions cut down the clean-up but do not remove it. Google says appropriate use of AI is not against its guidelines. Its spam rules are aimed at unhelpful pages made in bulk.
Many readers now think they can pick an AI-written email within a couple of lines. “I hope this email finds you well.” “Delve.” A long dash in every second sentence. A neat list of three. For a small business that matters, because a customer who thinks your follow-up came from a machine reads it as a mass message, even if you meant every word.
This guide pulls together the patterns that Wikipedia’s editors, language researchers, and writers and commenters on YouTube, X and Reddit keep pointing to. It shows what to write instead, walks through a rewrite of a quote follow-up email, and gives you instructions you can paste into ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot. The people whose ideas we used are credited as we go and listed at the end.
Why AI drafts all sound the same
Wikipedia’s volunteer editors maintain a long field guide called Signs of AI writing to catch undisclosed AI text on the encyclopedia. Their explanation is simple. A language model “tends to regress to the mean”: it reaches for the most statistically likely wording, the kind that fits the widest range of situations. In their words, “The subject becomes simultaneously less specific and more exaggerated.”
You can see it in the numbers. Dmitry Kobak and colleagues analysed more than 15 million biomedical research abstracts and found that in 2024 the word “delves” appeared about 28 times more often than earlier trends predicted, with “underscores” and “showcasing” also far above the expected rate. They estimate that at least 13.5% of 2024 abstracts were processed with an AI model (Science Advances, 2025). A study of peer reviews for a large AI conference found a similar jump in words like “meticulous” and “commendable”.
Nobody knows for certain why models favour these words. A 2025 study by Tom Juzek and Zina Ward found some signs that the way chatbots are trained on human ratings plays a part, but its experiment with people was inconclusive.
For a business owner, the useful point is that the wording is a symptom. The model writes generically because it knows nothing specific about you, this customer or this job. Duarte Business English, a YouTube channel that teaches business English, makes the point with a one-line request like “Tell the client I want to move the meeting”. As the presenter says, “that’s all the information that Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini has from you.”
AI words and phrases to avoid, and what to write instead
These words turn up in Wikipedia’s “AI vocabulary” list, in the research above and in most of the videos we watched. One or two in a long piece mean nothing. Wikipedia’s editors say a few “may be coincidental”, but lots of them, lots of times, “is one of the strongest tells for AI use”. Duarte Business English suggests a simple test: “If these are words people don’t say out loud very often, they shouldn’t be in an email.”
| AI tends to write | Try instead |
|---|---|
| delve into, dive into | look at, go through |
| leverage, utilise | use |
| seamless, robust, cutting-edge | say what it actually does, for example “syncs with Xero overnight” |
| navigate the complexities of | deal with, sort out |
| the landscape, the realm | the market, the options, or nothing at all |
| a testament to, underscores, highlights the importance of | shows, or cut the sentence |
| pivotal, crucial, vital | important, or say why it matters |
| foster, elevate, empower, unlock | help, improve, let, or say how |
| tailored to your unique needs | name the actual thing you will do for them |
| In today’s fast-paced world… | start with why you are writing |
| I hope this email finds you well | “Thanks for Tuesday’s call” or “I’m following up on the quote I sent on 3 June” (adapted from Duarte Business English) |
| Please don’t hesitate to reach out | “Call me on [number] or just reply” |
| at your earliest convenience | “by Thursday, if that works” |
| Great question! I hope this helps. Let me know if you’d like… | delete them |
The last row is the chatbot talking to you, and it sometimes gets pasted straight into an email or post. Wikipedia lists it as a separate sign. The flattering tone has a known cause too: in April 2025 OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman posted that recent updates had made ChatGPT’s personality “too sycophant-y and annoying”.
A word of caution about word lists. When investor Paul Graham posted in 2024 that a cold email had given itself away by using “delve”, writers in Nigeria pointed out that it is ordinary formal English there. A single word proves nothing about who wrote something. The more useful point is one Graham made in reply: “Using more complicated words than you need isn’t using a language better.”
Sentence patterns that give AI writing away
Changing words only gets you so far. In Reddit discussions about spotting AI text, several people say the shape gives it away more than the vocabulary. One commenter in r/artificial put it well: “every paragraph wraps up too cleanly, like it physically cannot leave a thought unresolved.” YouTuber Evan Edinger, whose video on spotting AI writing has over two million views, adds a fair warning: “One red flag on its own doesn’t prove anything, but once you start to hear one, the others aren’t usually too far behind.”
| Pattern | Example | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The “not X, it’s Y” contrast | “It’s not just a delay, it’s an opportunity.” | Say the actual point: “The delay gives us time to fix the pricing.” (Both examples are from Duarte Business English.) Keep contrasts for when someone really holds the view you are correcting. |
| Everything in threes | “Fast, friendly and reliable.” Three bullet points every time. | Use the number you actually have. Two is fine. So is four. |
| Inflated importance | “Marking a pivotal moment in our journey.” | State the fact and stop. |
| The “-ing” tail | “We now take online bookings, reflecting our commitment to customer convenience.” | Cut the tail, or give the reason plainly: “so you can book after hours”. |
| Scene-setting opener | “In today’s competitive market…” | Open with why you are writing. |
| Vague authority | “Experts agree…”, “Studies show…” | Name the source, or drop the claim. |
| Avoiding “is” and “has” | “Our clinic serves as a hub for…”, “The van boasts a…” | “Our clinic is…”, “The van has…” |
| Too tidy | Paragraphs of equal length, sentences of equal length, a closing summary that repeats the opening. | Vary the rhythm. Cut the recap. |
| Formatting habits | Title Case Headings, bold scattered everywhere, bullets that each start with a bold label and a colon, an emoji on every line. | Sentence-case headings, bold used rarely, and plain paragraphs where a list is not needed. |
| Leftovers | “Certainly! Here’s a revised version”, a [NAME] placeholder, a link ending in “utm_source=chatgpt.com”. | Read the final version before it goes out. A business owner on r/marketing spotted that last one in copy their agency had delivered. |
Of all of these, the “not X, it’s Y” contrast is the one people complain about most. The Humanizer skill described below puts it at the top of its list of the strongest tells. Blake Stockton, who made a whole video about it, counted three in about 250 words of one AI-assisted blog post and gave a blunt verdict: “Negation is vapid.” He also says it is a legitimate device when used sparingly. That matches the spirit of Wikipedia’s list, which its editors describe as “descriptive, not prescriptive”.
Why AI uses so many em dashes, and what to use instead
The em dash is the long dash some writers use to set off an aside. In February 2025 commentator Paul Skallas posted on X that a shortcut for spotting AI text was that “they all use this symbol” throughout. The post drew more than four million views. Fiction writer Moniza Hossain replied that “The em dash belongs to human writers. It’s our emotional support punctuation mark”, and her reply drew even more likes, according to the Daily Dot.
Both have a point. Writers have always used dashes, and the Australian Government Style Manual says they are “grammatically correct”, while advising you to use them rarely. But chatbots used far more of them than most people do, so readers learnt to treat a page full of them as a sign. Ars Technica noted that “No one knows precisely why LLMs tend to overuse em dashes.”
The models are changing. In November 2025 Sam Altman posted: “If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it’s supposed to do!” Wikipedia’s guide now files em dash overuse under “historical indicators”, and cites a July 2026 study finding that of current models only Claude used them more than professional writers.
What to do:
- If you do not normally use em dashes, say so in your standing instructions. The next section has wording you can copy.
- When one slips through, replace it with a comma, a full stop, a colon or brackets. Usually a full stop works best.
- Do not just swap in a hyphen. A hyphen joins words, so it looks like a typo in the middle of a sentence. Commenters made this point under a popular Reddit prompt that recommended it.
- If you have always used em dashes and like them, keep them. Just check that you have not ended up with one in every paragraph.
A ten-minute routine to make an AI draft sound like you
The creators and commenters we looked at disagree on plenty, but the same few steps keep coming up. This routine is adapted mostly from Duarte Business English’s editing recipe, with ideas from the others credited below. In order:
- Give it your material first. Talk through a voice note, paste your rough notes or an email you wrote yourself, and only then ask for a draft. Phil Pallen, a brand strategist who teaches small business owners to use ChatGPT, suggests telling it to “Ask me three questions to gather more information” before it writes. Turing College’s video goes a step further: write the messy first draft yourself and use AI to tidy it.
- Add one thing only you know. Duarte Business English calls this “the single most effective” edit. That could be a name, a date, a number, or something from your last conversation with the person.
- Cut it by about a third. For each sentence, ask whether it gives the reader new information or asks them for something. If it does neither, delete it. This is also Duarte’s test.
- Check it against your list. Keep the words and patterns above in a note you can search. Instructions alone do not catch everything. Pallen says plainly, “sometimes it misses my custom instructions”, and Stockton found the pattern kept appearing after he banned it, so he added it to a content review checklist instead.
- Read it aloud. If you would never say a sentence to that person’s face, rewrite it. As Turing College puts it, “If it doesn’t sound like you, you let it do too much.”
Do not overcorrect. Under a popular Reddit post sharing a 15-point “write like a real person” prompt, one of the top replies warned that “the more we actively try to sound ‘less like ai’, the more we sound like illiterate fools.” Adding typos or slang to look human makes things worse. The goal is clear, specific writing. That is also what Australia’s Style Manual asks of government writers: familiar words, active voice, and sentences that average about 15 words.
Before and after: a quote follow-up email
We wrote this example to show the patterns above in one place. The plumber, the customer and the job are made up. This is the kind of draft you get from a one-line request such as “write a professional follow-up email about my quote”.
Before
Subject: Following Up On Your Hot Water System Quote
Dear Valued Customer,
I hope this email finds you well! I wanted to reach out and touch base regarding the quote we recently provided for your hot water system replacement.
In today’s fast-paced world, we understand that choosing the right hot water solution can feel overwhelming. That’s why we’re committed to delivering seamless, reliable and cost-effective service tailored to your unique needs. It’s not just a hot water system, it’s peace of mind for your whole family.
Our team of experienced professionals is ready to help you navigate the options and make an informed decision. Should you have any questions whatsoever, please don’t hesitate to reach out at your earliest convenience.
We look forward to the opportunity to serve you!
Warm regards,
The Team
After
Subject: Your hot water quote
Hi Priya,
Thanks for having me out on Tuesday. I’m following up on the quote for swapping your old electric storage unit for the heat pump we talked about: $4,380 installed, quote number 1187.
The price holds until 20 November. If you go ahead before then, we can usually book the install within a week.
Any questions, call me on [your mobile] or just reply here. And if you’ve gone with someone else, that’s fine. A quick reply saves me chasing you.
Sam
| Change | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| “Dear Valued Customer” became “Hi Priya” | Using the customer’s name tells them a person wrote it to them. |
| Added Tuesday’s visit, the heat pump, the price and the quote number | These are the details only you know, and they make the email hard to mistake for a template. |
| Cut the opener, the “fast-paced world” line and the “peace of mind” contrast | None of them gave Priya new information or asked her for anything. |
| Replaced “at your earliest convenience” with a real date | A deadline gives her a reason to reply, and it is true. |
| Added “if you’ve gone with someone else, that’s fine” | It makes replying easy, which is what you actually want from a follow-up. |
| Signed by Sam, not “The Team” | A named person gets more replies than “The Team”, and it tells the customer who to call. |
| Went from about 130 words to under 90 | Shorter is easier to read on a phone between jobs. |
Before you send anything like this, check that every number and promise in it is real. AI drafts are good at inventing plausible prices and timeframes. Our guide to checking an AI-drafted reply before you send it covers that two-minute check.
Instructions you can paste into ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot
Put these where your tool keeps standing instructions. That might be custom instructions in ChatGPT, a project or style in Claude, or the start of a saved prompt. Change the word list to suit you. Where you can, tell the model what to do rather than only what to avoid. One Reddit commenter noted that naming a pattern prominently can make a model produce more of it, and another found that banning one phrasing just produced a near copy, such as “less about X, more about Y”. A few examples of your own writing usually help more than any list.
Write like a small business owner talking to a customer they know.
• Use plain, everyday words and contractions. Keep most sentences short, and vary the length.
• Start with the point. Say why I am writing in the first sentence.
• Use only the facts I give you. If a detail is missing, such as a price, date or name, ask me instead of making it up.
• Make direct statements. Use a contrast only when the reader really believes the opposite.
• Use commas, full stops and brackets instead of em dashes.
• Write in paragraphs. Use a list only when I ask for one.
• Leave out: “I hope this finds you well”, “don’t hesitate to reach out”, “at your earliest convenience”, delve, leverage, seamless, robust, elevate, navigate, landscape, testament, pivotal, tailored, unlock.
• Before you write, ask me up to three questions about anything you need to know.
Here are two emails I wrote myself, to show how I sound: [paste two short emails]
When you already have a draft, ask for a list of problems before you ask for a rewrite. The Nerdy Novelist, a YouTube channel about writing with AI, recommends asking for an improvement plan and then applying only that plan, changing nothing else, because a full rewrite is likely to come out worse than the draft you started with. Turing College suggests asking “What’s the weakest argument here?” instead of “make it sound professional”.
Don’t rewrite this. Read it as the customer would, then list up to five places where it sounds generic, stiff or like it was written by AI. For each one, quote the exact words and suggest a plainer version. Then tell me the weakest or least clear point in it.
[paste your draft]
Once you have the list, accept the changes you agree with and make them yourself.
Humanizer skills and other tools
If you use Claude Code or another AI tool that supports “skills” (reusable sets of instructions the assistant can load), the best-known option is Humanizer. It is free and open source, made by Siqi Chen, and had more than 62,000 stars (GitHub’s version of bookmarks) when we checked on 30 October 2026. Chen built it in January 2026 by asking Claude Code to turn Wikipedia’s guide into a skill. It checks text for 26 patterns. Its README is honest about its purpose: “Getting past AI detectors is not a goal, and detectors still flag most of its output.” It also does not invent facts. If a sentence needs a detail that is missing, it asks you. When Ars Technica tried it, the output came out “less precise and more casual”, so read what it gives you before you use it.
Two other open-source projects are worth knowing about. stop-slop, by Hardik Pandya, is a stricter skill with lists of banned phrases and sentence structures, including no em dashes. unslop takes a different approach: it measures the habits your particular model falls back on and turns them into an instruction file. If you only use ChatGPT or Copilot in a browser, the instructions in the previous section do much the same job, and the Wikipedia guide is free to read.
Be wary of “AI humaniser” websites that promise to make text “undetectable”. They are built to fool detection software, which is a different goal from writing well for your customers. You would also be pasting your text into a service you know little about, so never put customer details into one. Our guide on what to remove before pasting customer messages into AI explains why.
AI detectors are not a reliable test of your writing either. OpenAI withdrew its own AI text classifier in July 2023 “due to its low rate of accuracy”. It had correctly identified only 26% of AI-written text and wrongly flagged 9% of human writing (OpenAI). A 2023 study in the journal Patterns found that seven detectors, on average, labelled 61% of essays by non-native English writers as AI-generated. Write for the person who will read it.
Does Google penalise AI-written content?
Not simply for using AI. Google’s guidance on AI-generated content says “Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines”, and that its focus is “on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced”.
What Google’s spam policies do target is “scaled content abuse”: many pages generated “for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users”. One of its examples is “Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users”. The same policies treat copying content from other sites and changing it only slightly, for example by swapping in synonyms, as scraping. Running someone else’s article through a humaniser and republishing it fits that description.
For a small business website, Google’s guidance comes down to this: using AI to help you write is fine when each page helps the person reading it and says something you can stand behind. If your team is using AI for customer-facing writing, a short AI policy that says who checks what before it goes out is a good place to start.
Sources and credits
Research and guidance:
- Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing (read on 30 October 2026; the page changes often)
- Kobak and colleagues, Delving into LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications through excess vocabulary, Science Advances, 2025
- Liang and colleagues, Monitoring AI-modified content at scale, ICML 2024
- Juzek and Ward, Why does ChatGPT “delve” so much?, COLING 2025
- Liang and colleagues, GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers, Patterns, 2023
- OpenAI, New AI classifier for indicating AI-written text (updated July 2023)
- Google Search Central, Google Search’s guidance about AI-generated content and Spam policies for Google web search
- Australian Government Style Manual, Plain language and word choice, Sentences and Dashes
- Ars Technica, on ChatGPT and em dashes (November 2025) and on the Humanizer skill (January 2026)
Videos we learnt from:
- Duarte Business English, 10 Signs an Email Was Written by AI (and how to fix them)
- Turing College, I Can Spot AI Writing in Seconds
- Evan Edinger, I Can Spot AI Writing Instantly
- Phil Pallen, How to Make ChatGPT Sound Like You
- Blake Stockton, Don’t Write Like AI: “It’s not x, it’s y”
- The Nerdy Novelist, 4 Prompting Techniques That Make AI Writing Sound Human
Posts and discussions:
- On X: Sam Altman on em dashes and a sycophantic update, Paul Graham on “delve”, Paul Skallas on em dashes and Moniza Hossain’s reply
- On Reddit: r/artificial, r/ChatGPT, r/ArtificialInteligence and r/marketing threads
- On GitHub: blader/humanizer, hardikpandya/stop-slop and mshumer/unslop
Figures, star counts and quotes were checked on 30 October 2026. AI models change their habits often, so some of these patterns will fade and new ones will appear.
Practical thinking on AI, automation and the work behind a business.
