AI writing tells: a checklist for before you send

Updated 2026-09-20 · a working page, not a sales page

This is an editing pass, not a detector. Run it on anything with a name on it and the text will read as written by a person, because most of the items below force you to add something only a person could add.

Short answer

Is there a number, a date or a name in the first two sentences?
Does any sentence start with Additionally, Moreover, Furthermore or However?
Are there two adjectives in a row? Cut one.
Do three consecutive sentences have similar length? Break the pattern.
Does the text hedge a claim you could just make?
Could this paragraph appear in someone else's document unchanged? Delete it.

The full checklist

specificity: at least one checkable fact per paragraph
rhythm: sentence lengths vary at least two to one across the piece
hedging: no 'may', 'could potentially', 'in some cases' on claims you can verify
transitions: cut signposting words; the logic should carry itself
adjectives: no sequences of three; cut at least one adjective per noun phrase
voice: one opinion you would defend out loud
structure: no three-item list with identical item lengths
endings: no closing paragraph that restates the opening
formatting: no emoji header on a plain business document
temperature: does the text care about its subject at all
length: would 20 percent less change anything it says
honesty: is there one limitation stated

The two that matter most

Specificity and temperature. A text with real numbers and a visible point of view reads as human even if everything else is wrong. A text with neither reads as generated no matter how varied the sentence lengths are.

Everything else on the list is a shortcut to those two.

How to use this on a real draft

Do one pass per item rather than trying to fix everything at once; each pass is a search, not a rewrite. Ten minutes total on a 500-word document. Read the result out loud at the end — anything you would not say to a colleague is not finished.

Before / after

What people usually write	What it looks like after
Our solution may potentially help teams in some cases to achieve better results.	It removes one step from a job people do twenty times a week.
The platform is robust, seamless, and intuitive, designed to empower modern teams.	There is one screen. You paste on the left, the result appears on the right.
In conclusion, the above demonstrates the importance of an effective content strategy.	Write shorter, say more, ship it. That is the whole argument.

What this page will not do. It will not fool an AI detector and it is not meant to. Detection tools disagree with each other by design, and any service promising to beat them is selling an unreliable claim.

If you want this done to your own draft: ShipCopy takes a piece of text you already wrote and rewrites it in one of three modes — rewrite it to read human, turn a product description into launch copy, or turn a plain-language request into a reusable prompt. Six output formats, 13 languages. 10 generations free, no card.

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Questions

Is there a single reliable AI detector?

No. Independent testing has repeatedly found high error rates in both directions. Treat any score as a hint, never as proof.

Does this work for academic writing?

The rhythm and hedging items do. Check your institution's disclosure rules before using any tool on submitted work.

Do I need to run every item?

The first six catch most of it. The rest are refinements.

Related guides

See all guides

Get the checklist as a file you can actually use. One email with the full list, plus the three tells that get caught most often. No drip, no "just checking in" follow-up.