Humanize Writing

The core diagnosis

AI writing has six tells. Check for all of them before editing:

1. Zero first-person — no "I think", "in my view", "honestly", "to me"
2. Structural colons — colons used as "behold what follows" punctuation mid-sentence
3. Checklist rebuttals — "On X:" / "First:" / "Regarding X:" patterns that read like a list in disguise
4. Textbook phrasing — formal words a real person wouldn't say out loud
5. Perfect qualification — every claim hedged equally, no real conviction
6. Overly smooth transitions — paragraphs glide together too perfectly

Workflow

1. Read the full draft and flag every instance of the six tells above
2. Apply fixes using the patterns in references/patterns.md
3. Read the result aloud — if it sounds like someone talking, it's done; if it still sounds like a report, repeat