You read your draft back and something is off. Every sentence is correct. Nothing is wrong, exactly. And yet it has the texture of a hotel lobby: clean, pleasant, and nobody actually lives there.
That feeling has a name now. People say a text "sounds like AI", and they are usually reacting to a handful of habits rather than any single word. The good news is that habits can be spotted and changed. Here are nine of them.
1. It opens by setting the scene for no one
"In today's fast-paced digital world…" "In an era where technology is reshaping everything…" Openers like these tell the reader nothing they didn't already know when they woke up.
Fix: start with the claim, the problem or the person. Delete your first sentence and see whether anything is lost. Usually nothing is.
2. Every sentence is the same length
Read a paragraph aloud and tap the table at each full stop. If the taps come at even intervals, the rhythm is flat. People write a long sentence, then a short one. Sometimes a fragment. Generated text tends to settle into one comfortable length and stay there.
Fix: break one long sentence in two, and merge two short ones somewhere else. Uneven is good.
3. It announces importance instead of showing it
"It is important to note that…" "It's worth mentioning…" "This plays a crucial role in…" If something matters, the reader will notice. Announcing it is like laughing at your own joke before the punchline.
Fix: remove the announcement and keep the fact. "It is important to note that the deadline moved" becomes "The deadline moved."
4. Lists of three, everywhere
"Faster, smarter and more efficient." "Clarity, consistency and confidence." One triad reads as rhythm. A triad in every paragraph reads as a template.
Fix: keep the triads that carry three real ideas. For the rest, pick the one item that matters most and say something specific about it.
5. Transitions doing all the work
"Moreover." "Furthermore." "Additionally." "In conclusion." These words try to glue paragraphs together that should hold together on their own.
Fix: if two paragraphs need "furthermore" between them, the second one probably needs a better first sentence. Write that instead.
6. Vocabulary from a brochure
Delve, tapestry, landscape, realm, leverage, seamless, robust, foster, pivotal. None of these words is wrong. Together they sound like a pitch deck reading itself aloud. We keep a longer list in common AI phrases to avoid and words ChatGPT overuses.
Fix: swap for the plain word: use, start, area, strong, help. If the plain word makes the sentence sound empty, the sentence was empty.
7. No specifics
Generated drafts love the general case: "many businesses", "various factors", "a wide range of benefits". Human writing tends to name things: the client, the number, the Tuesday it broke.
Fix: replace one vague phrase per paragraph with a concrete detail you actually know. Only facts you can stand behind; never invent one to sound authentic.
8. The tidy summary at the end of every section
A paragraph makes its point, then a final sentence restates the point "overall". Readers notice when they are told the same thing twice.
Fix: end on your strongest sentence, not on a recap of it.
9. Em dashes in every paragraph
The em dash is a perfectly good punctuation mark. Used in every other sentence, it has become one of the most recognisable tics of assistant-written text.
Fix: keep one where it earns its place. Turn the others into commas, colons or full stops.
"But I wrote it myself, and it still sounds like AI"
That happens, and it is not your imagination. Language models learned from a lot of polished, corporate, search-optimised prose. If that is the register you were taught to write in (school essays, marketing copy, formal emails), your natural style overlaps with theirs. Plain, well-structured writing can trip the same alarms.
The fix is the same either way: more specific, less announced, uneven rhythm, fewer stock phrases. Those changes make writing better whoever drafted it.
A note on AI detectors
Online detectors estimate how statistically similar a text is to machine output. They make mistakes in both directions, and no tool can tell you with certainty who wrote something. Use them as a rough signal, not a verdict, and edit for the reader rather than the score.
Check your draft
Paste a paragraph into the free Sounday style check. It runs in your browser, highlights the patterns above and suggests a plainer alternative for each one. When you are ready to edit, how to make writing sound less like AI walks through the process step by step.