Wikipedia has a good page about the Signs of AI Writing. When I mentioned that we should try to educate others about writing (rather than slamming them as AI slop), this is the kind of thing I meant. On the other hand, for someone who isn’t great at writing to begin with, this list represents another list of stuff I need to consider when writing.
Here’s a checklist I created to help identify AI wording in your own text. First read through the Signs of AI Writing page and then use these as quick reminders of things to look for.
Content
- Exaggerated significance claims
- Overstated notability/coverage
- Shallow, generic analysis
- Promotional or ad‑like tone
- Vague attributions/weasel words
- Formulaic “challenges/future” endings
- List titles treated as proper nouns
- Overly broad “see also” sections
Language and grammar
- Repeated AI buzzwords
- Avoidance of simple “is/are”
- “Not only…but also” overuse
- Rule‑of‑three phrasing
- Unnecessary synonym swapping
- “From X to Y” ranges without a scale
Style
- Title‑case usage in headings
- Excessive bolding of keywords
- Inline‑header list formatting
- Emoji usage in headers and lists
- Heavy em‑dash reliance
- Unnecessary or short tables
- Inconsistent curly quotes
- Email‑style subject lines, “subject:”
Communication intended for the user
- Conversational helper language
- Knowledge-cutoff disclaimers and speculation
- Phrasal templates and [placeholder text]
Markup
- Leftover Markdown markup
- Broken or missing inline citations
- JSON code at the end of sentences
Citations
- Broken external links
- Invalid DOI and ISBNs
- Stale access-dates
- DOIs that lead to unrelated articles
- Book citations without pages or URLs
- Incorrect or unconventional use of references
- utm_source= parameters in URLs
Miscellaneous
- Sudden shift in writing style
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