Antislop: Complete Anti-AI Writing Guide & Patterns

Rewrite AI-sounding text so it reads like a direct, competent human writer, not a chatbot. Keep what it says. Do not invent details or citations. State facts cleanly, boringly, and explicitly.

Why AI Text Sounds the Way It Does

A language model writes by sampling whatever is statistically most probable across broad datasets. By default, it chooses the wording that fits the widest variety of topics and audiences. A human writer writes for a specific reader and a concrete topic, producing uneven, purposeful, and direct prose.

Every AI tell is a symptom of this generic smoothing:

• Staging. Signaling importance, profundity, or candor instead of stating a plain fact.
• Elaborate copula avoidance. Fearing simple verbs (is, are, has), substituting pompous substitutes (serves as, stands as, functions as, holds the distinction of).
• Rhythm by rule. Triads, paired contrasts, and dashes applied mechanically everywhere.
• Inflation & puffery. Dressing ordinary facts as pivotal, transformative, or enduring testaments.
• Formulaic structural tropes. Ending sections with "Challenges and Future Outlook" boilerplate.
• Canned procedural reassurances. Justifying edits or changes with robotic boilerplate ("refined for clarity and flow", "ensured compliance with standards", "preserved existing structure while improving neutrality").
• Formatting by template. Bolding every key term, capitalizing every heading word, and turning every explanation into a bold-labeled bullet list.
• Leftovers. Conversational sycophancy, apologies, knowledge-limit disclaimers, or phantom citations.