Signs of AI Writing: Frequent Dashes, Rule-of-Three Lists & Participle Clauses
You can spot AI writing fastest by looking at punctuation and clause shape instead of single buzzwords. Anyone can delete an overused adjective in ten seconds, yet language models still leave clear structural tracks across a draft. Four or five interrupting dashes in a short section or a neat three-item list at the end of a line will give the model away. ChatGPT and Claude also lean on 'not X, but Y' contrasts and '-ing' phrases bolted onto a claim. Here are the main habits to look for when you edit.
1. Punctuation and formatting habits: em-dashes and bolded lists
Good editors will save em-dashes for a sharp aside in a sentence. ChatGPT and Claude use them like duct tape so that they can join two clauses without picking a real conjunction for the job. If a 300-word passage has four or five dashes in it, readers know right away that a model generated the draft.
A second giveaway shows up in bulleted lists. If you ask a language model for five tips on a topic, almost every line comes back to you as a bold title with a colon followed by a full statement. Human writers rarely bold the first three words of every single bullet unless they are building a glossary for a book.
AI punctuation and list habit
Our onboarding flow -- designed for distributed engineering teams -- reduces setup time significantly. - **Automated Provisioning:** Accounts are created in two minutes. - **Role-Based Access:** Permissions match team structure.
Clean human formatting
We built the onboarding flow for our engineering teams so that account setup takes two minutes for them. New hires get an account with permissions that match their role on day one.
2. Rhetorical crutches: triads, contrasts & trailing -ing clauses
A rhetorical trick works fine if you use it once in a talk with your team. It wears thin fast when a model repeats the exact same formula in every paragraph. Watch out for these three habits when you review a draft:
- Rule-of-three lists: Putting nouns or adjectives into neat triples at the end of a line when you could just name one detail that matters to the reader.
- Contrastive framing: Wrapping a plain claim in 'It is not about X, but Y' when you could just state what the thing does in plain words for the reader.
- Trailing participle clauses: Tacking '-ing' phrases onto the end of a line when you are trying to fake deep analysis where there is none.
Trailing participle + triad tell
The update reduces database query latency by 40%, highlighting our commitment to speed, reliability, and scalability.
Direct factual statement
The update cuts our database query latency by 40%, so that checkout pages load faster for you and your buyers during peak traffic.
If you replace the vague '-ing' moral at the end of the line with a real customer outcome, you remove two AI tells at once.
3. Stock openers, clichés & heavy corporate words
Why do language models default to stiff corporate words in a draft? Because they were trained on formal press releases and SEO filler on the web. You will see staged openers like 'In today's rapidly changing world' or 'Here's the thing:' alongside filler phrases like 'it is important to note' in almost every block.
Good writers pick 'use' over 'utilize' and 'help' over 'facilitate' so that the reader stays focused on the facts instead of the vocabulary. If you cut those warm-up phrases out of your draft, any paragraph will feel sharper to the reader right away.
Rewrite your draft in the Wordlane editor
Pick a tone and compare rewritten versions side by side while keeping your facts intact.
4. Uniform rhythm across sentences and paragraphs
The hardest AI patterns to catch by eye are spread across the whole document. One 28-word sentence is fine on its own in a post, yet a dozen of them in a row is an obvious giveaway to both readers and detectors. When you scan a full page in the editor, look for these four pacing habits in your text:
- Monotone sentence length: Six or more lines in a row that all sit around the same number of words without a short line to break the pace for you.
- Uniform paragraph blocks: Three or four sections in a row that all finish at nearly the exact same height for the reader.
- Repeated sentence starters: Three lines in a row that open with the exact same pronoun or transition word at the start of the clause.
- Mini-summaries at the end of every block: Closing each section with a neat 'Overall,' or 'In short,' moral before you move on to the next heading.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do em-dashes automatically mean a text was written by AI?
No single mark proves AI authorship on its own, since plenty of reporters and essayists like dashes in their work. Detectors flag a passage when four or five dashes show up in the same block alongside three-item lists and trailing '-ing' clauses.
How can I clean up these AI habits in a long draft?
Paste your text into the Wordlane editor on the home page and click Humanize after picking a tone. You can compare the rewritten versions side by side and copy the one that fits your voice.