The twelve AI tells (and how to remove them)

Why AI prose has a fingerprint

Large language models default to a recognizable set of stylistic habits. Individually each is harmless; together they make writing feel generated rather than written. Naming them is the first step to removing them.

InkSmith's humanization pass (Pygmalion) runs after drafting and targets these patterns one sentence at a time, so the version you read has already been cleaned. (The exact set your build detects may differ slightly — treat this as the canonical reference list.)

The twelve tells

1. The "it wasn't just X — it was Y" construction, and its cousins ("not merely… but").

2. Over-fond em-dashes used for dramatic pauses several times a paragraph.

3. Stock metaphors and dead idiom — "the air was electric," "a testament to," "sent shivers down her spine."

4. Tidy rule-of-three lists everywhere, even when two items or four would read more naturally.

5. Telling the emotion instead of showing it — summary sentences like "She felt a profound sense of unease."

6. Hedging filler — "perhaps," "in many ways," "it's worth noting that," "a certain."

7. Connective throat-clearing — sentences opening with "Indeed," "Moreover," "Furthermore," "Ultimately."

8. Uniform sentence rhythm — clause after clause of the same length, with no short punchy lines to break it.

9. Vague intensifiers — "very," "really," "quite," "truly," "simply" — standing in for a precise word.

10. The neat moral wrap-up — paragraphs that end on a tidy, generic takeaway.

11. Generic sensory detail — "a delicious meal," "a beautiful view" — with nothing specific or surprising.

12. Over-explaining — restating what the previous sentence already made clear.

Removing them without flattening your voice

The goal isn't to beat a detector for its own sake — it's to make the prose genuinely good. A dedicated pass that hunts for these specific tells is more reliable than asking a model to 'write more naturally,' because models drift back to their defaults.

Combined with consistent cross-chapter voice (so the whole book reads like one author), removing these twelve is what makes an AI-assisted novel read like a person sat down and wrote it.