Blog
The weekly column on AI's accent, plus longer guides built on the sourced data.
Claude's New Model Trades Stock Phrases for Run-On Paragraphs
Anthropic's own guide for Fable 5.1 admits denser prose, and a viral term names the AI 'teaser' habit that keeps reappearing.
Why do AI-writing checkers miss the most obvious AI writing?
Six regular expressions, validated on thirteen of thirteen positives, found none of the thirty-seven instances a reader found in the same fifteen documents.
Study · Aug 29Do AI-writing checkers agree with each other? I tested three
Two independent rule sets, run over the same 456 documents, reproduce three findings from the corpus study. Both also contain the same measurement mistake.
Guide · Aug 28Why does AI keep apologizing and rating its own answers?
AI prose addresses an evaluator, human prose addresses a reader. Six shapes that habit takes, and a one-second test for catching it.
Study · Aug 27Do all AI models write the same way? I measured four
160 documents, four models, one pre-ChatGPT human baseline. Em dashes are a Claude habit, the delve vocabulary is a Gemini habit, and no rule describes AI writing in general.
Guide · Aug 11I had an AI build a website that catches AI writing
The build log behind this site: the weekly robot, the honesty rules, and the embarrassing parts.
Guide · Aug 11Claude now watermarks its text. Here's what that changes.
The invisible mark proves a model touched the text, and nothing more. What writers should and shouldn't worry about.
GuideHow to tell if something was written by AI
The measurable signs, ranked, and why word lists alone stopped working.
GuideThe words AI overuses, measured
Delve, underscore, meticulous, and friends, with the actual multipliers.
GuideMake ChatGPT not sound like AI
The five rules that do the heavy lifting, and what settings can't fix.
GuideWhy does AI use so many em dashes?
The per-model rates, the fix OpenAI shipped, and the one chatbot still doing it.
This week · Sep 7The Load-Bearing Tic, Now With a Growth Chart
A new GitHub study quantifies Claude's favorite catchphrase, while OpenAI tunes two of its own tells out of ChatGPT.
This week · Aug 31Claude Opus 5's New Tic: Everything Is "Load-Bearing"
A single overused metaphor turned into a developer meme this week, showing how AI writing tells are model-specific and short-lived.
This week · Aug 24The Em Dash Retired. Nine New Tells Took Its Place.
A viral checklist of post-em-dash writing tics shows AI-detection folklore evolving as fast as the models it tracks.
This week · Aug 17Why AI Loves the Em Dash: The Markdown Theory
New research ties AI's em-dash habit to markdown training, while Wikipedia officially names the 'not X, it's Y' tell.