AI Writing Tropes to Avoid

Comprehensive catalog of AI writing patterns that make text feel machine-generated. Any single pattern used once might be fine. The problem is when multiple tropes appear together or when one trope repeats throughout a piece.

How to Use

When writing or editing prose:

1. Draft the content.
2. Check against the trope categories below.
3. If you spot a pattern, rewrite that passage.
4. Re-read the whole piece for pattern density — a few is tolerable, a cluster is not.

Trope Categories

Word Choice

Overused vocabulary and phrasing that AI defaults to. See references/word-choice.md.

Key offenders: "quietly", "delve", "tapestry", "landscape", "serves as", "leverage", "robust", "harness", "streamline".

Sentence Structure

Formulaic sentence patterns that no human writes at scale. See references/sentence-structure.md.

Key offenders: negative parallelism ("not X — it's Y"), dramatic countdowns ("Not X. Not Y. Just Z."), self-posed rhetorical questions, anaphora abuse, tricolon abuse, gerund fragment litanies.

Paragraph Structure

Layout and organization patterns that betray AI generation. See references/paragraph-structure.md.

Key offenders: short punchy fragments as standalone paragraphs, listicles disguised as prose.

Tone

Voice and framing habits that sound performative. See references/tone.md.

Key offenders: false suspense ("Here's the kicker"), patronizing analogies ("Think of it as..."), false vulnerability, stakes inflation, vague attributions, invented concept labels.

Formatting

Visual and typographic tells. See references/formatting.md.

Key offenders: em-dash addiction, bold-first bullets, unicode decoration.

Composition

Document-level structural problems. See references/composition.md.

Key offenders: fractal summaries, dead metaphors beaten into the ground, historical analogy stacking, one-point dilution, signposted conclusions.

Quick Self-Check

Before delivering prose, ask:

• Did I use the same sentence structure more than twice in a row?
• Did I use "not X — it's Y" or "Here's the thing" anywhere?
• Did I stack three or more historical examples back-to-back?
• Did I inflate the stakes beyond what the content warrants?
• Would a human actually write a first draft this way?
• Does any passage sound like it belongs on a motivational poster?

The One Rule

Write like a human: varied, imperfect, specific.