ChatGPT
A TA marking forty essays on a Sunday night does not need a detector to notice a ChatGPT draft. The giveaway is rarely a wrong fact. It is the voice: every paragraph opens the same way, closes with a moral, and leans on the same dozen words.
None of these habits is wrong on its own. People write “crucial” and “moreover” too. The problem is density. When the tells pile up, the reader stops reading for meaning and starts skimming. Here are the ones that show up most.
“It’s not just X, it’s Y”
This is the most recognisable construction in AI prose. It sets up a claim nobody made so it can knock it down.
Remote learning isn’t just a temporary fix — it’s a fundamental shift in how we think about education.
Most of my classes stayed online after 2021, and two of them worked better that way.
The fix is to say the second half directly and add the fact that makes it true. “Not only… but also” and “this isn’t about X, it’s about Y” belong to the same family.
The AI vocabulary list
Some words appear in model output far more often than in student writing: delve, tapestry, testament, landscape, realm, pivotal, underscore, foster, showcase, seamless, robust, leverage, embark, ever-evolving. One is fine. Three in a paragraph read like a brochure.
This essay delves into the rich tapestry of factors that underscore the pivotal role of sleep in academic success.
This essay looks at why students who sleep seven hours or more tend to get better grades.
Swap the decorative word for the plain one, then ask what the sentence is claiming. Often the plain version shows that the sentence needs a number or a name.
Stock openers and closers
“In today’s fast-paced world”, “In the digital age”, “It’s important to note that”, “In conclusion”, “Overall”, “Ultimately”. These frame a paragraph without adding anything to it. Graders see them so often that they have become a signal on their own.
In conclusion, it is important to note that social media plays a crucial role in shaping teenage identity.
Teenagers in our survey compared themselves to classmates more than to influencers, which surprised us.
A closing paragraph should end on the most specific thing you found, not on a summary of what the reader just read.
Staged one-liners
“Let that sink in.” “Here’s the thing.” “And the best part?” “The result?” These come from social media posts, and models copy them into essays and cover letters. They build suspense for a point that would be stronger if you just made it.
Em dashes everywhere
A dash now and then is good punctuation. AI drafts use it as a universal connector, two or three per paragraph, often where a comma or a full stop would do. If you use dashes in your own writing, keep them. If they arrived with the draft, most can become commas or full stops.
Lists of three
“Innovative, efficient, and scalable.” “Inspiration, collaboration, and growth.” Models reach for exactly three items because the rhythm sounds complete. Real lists have as many items as the meaning needs, often two.
“Moreover” at the start of every paragraph
Moreover, furthermore, additionally, consequently, notably. Starting sentence after sentence with a connector is a habit of machine prose, and it makes an essay feel like a list of points glued together. If the logic between two sentences is clear, you rarely need the word. If it is not clear, the word will not fix it.
Moreover, sleep improves memory. Furthermore, it boosts mood. Additionally, it supports overall well-being.
Sleep helps you keep what you studied, and you are less irritable the next day, which makes the next study session easier.
Every sentence the same length
Human writing has rhythm. A long sentence that builds an argument, then a short one. AI drafts tend to produce sentence after sentence of about twenty words, each with the same shape. Read a paragraph aloud: if it sounds like a metronome, break one sentence up and join two others.
Headings and bullets for everything
A 600-word reflection with five headings and bullet points under each is another giveaway. For short assignments, three or four connected paragraphs read better and show the reader how your ideas link together.
Hedges stacked on hedges
This could potentially suggest that the policy may possibly have some impact.
The policy may have had an effect, but the sample was small.
Keep one hedge where the evidence is thin and drop the rest. In medical, legal or statistical writing, a careful “may” is often correct, so leave it alone there.
Leftovers from the chat window
“Great question!”, “I hope this helps!”, “Certainly!”, markdown asterisks around bold words, emoji at the start of headings, curly quotation marks pasted into a form that expects straight ones. These are the easiest tells to remove and the most embarrassing to leave in.
What not to change
Numbers, dates, names, quotations and technical terms stay exactly as they are. Smoothing a sentence is never worth changing a fact. Our tool locks numbers and quoted text so they cannot be edited by accident.
Adding typos on purpose or running text through three paraphrasers does not make writing better, and no tool can promise a particular detector score. The aim is writing a real reader can get through without wincing.
If the checker lights up a lot of your draft, do not panic and delete everything. Start with paragraphs where two or more patterns sit together; fixing those changes the feel of the piece more than anything else. And a draft with no highlights at all can still fall flat if it has no names, numbers or examples. Polishing phrasing and adding substance are separate jobs.
Next, see the same patterns fixed in a real essay paragraph, a cover letter, a blog post and an email to a professor.
Other free tools: Word and character counter · Report cover maker