skills/human-prose/references/ai-writing-patterns.md

# AI-writing pattern reference

This reference is a practical editing inventory. These are probabilistic tendencies, not proof of authorship and not grammatical crimes. Human prose can contain any of them. The useful question is whether a pattern is doing real work in this passage or appearing because a language model reached for a familiar template.

## 1. Significance inflation

Watch for facts that are immediately inflated into claims about importance, legacy, cultural resonance, historical weight, broader trends, or enduring influence.

Common forms include:

- `stands as a testament to`
- `serves as a reminder of`
- `marks a pivotal moment`
- `plays a vital role`
- `underscores the importance of`
- `reflects broader trends`
- `solidifies its position as`

Fix the underlying move rather than replacing the flagged phrase with a synonym. State what happened, what changed, or what the evidence establishes. If the significance is real and necessary, make the causal or evidentiary link explicit.

## 2. Superficial analysis attached to facts

LLM prose often adds a trailing present-participle clause that claims a fact "highlights", "reflects", "demonstrates", "showcases", "fosters", "enhances", or "contributes to" something larger.

Example shape:

`The station added two platforms, improving connectivity and highlighting its continued importance to the region.`

The second half needs evidence. If the concrete consequence is known, name it. Otherwise stop after the fact.

## 3. Promotional or brochure language

Watch for copy that sounds like marketing even when the task is neutral description. Common clusters include `vibrant`, `renowned`, `groundbreaking`, `rich`, `profound`, `natural beauty`, `nestled`, `in the heart of`, `diverse array`, `commitment to`, `boasts`, `showcases`, and `exemplifies`.

Keep an evaluative adjective when the speaker or genre genuinely owns the judgment. In neutral prose, replace puffery with the specific feature that earned the adjective.

## 4. Canned proof of notability

AI-generated biographies and institutional descriptions often insist that the subject is important by cataloguing `independent coverage`, `regional media`, `trade publications`, `prominent outlets`, or an `active social media presence`.

A real source matters because of what it reports. Name the source and the fact it supports. Do not use categories of coverage as substitute evidence.

## 5. Vague attribution

Watch for `experts argue`, `observers note`, `industry reports suggest`, `studies show`, `critics say`, `widely regarded`, or `several sources` when no source is actually named.

Name the source if the material provides one. If it does not, remove the borrowed authority or preserve the uncertainty plainly. Never manufacture attribution.

## 6. Copula avoidance and fake-strong verbs

LLMs often dodge plain `is`, `are`, and `has` through inflated substitutes:

- `serves as`
- `stands as`
- `marks`
- `functions as`
- `operates as`
- `represents`
- `boasts`
- `features`
- `offers`
- `maintains`

Use the substitute when its verb meaning is genuinely relevant. Otherwise use the plain copula or a more direct action verb.

## 7. Vague connections

`Associated with`, `connected to`, `linked to`, and `in connection with` can hide the actual relationship.

Prefer the relationship itself: worked for, collaborated with, funded, designed, caused, used, opposed, married, studied under, sold to, or another exact verb supported by the text.

## 8. Corrective negative parallelism

A common LLM rhetorical habit pretends the reader has made a mistake and then corrects it:

- `not only X but Y`
- `not just X`
- `It isn't X. It's Y.`
- `X rather than Y`
- `while X, it is also Y`

The construction is legitimate when a real contrast exists. It becomes slop when repeatedly used to create emphasis from nothing. State the important proposition directly.

## 9. Rule-of-three padding

LLMs frequently generate three adjectives, three short clauses, or three labeled list items because the rhythm sounds complete.

Do not change a real list of three facts. Cut or combine ornamental triplets when the third item exists mainly to fill the pattern.

## 10. Vocabulary clustering

A single fashionable word proves nothing. A dense cluster is more useful as an editing warning.

Watch for repeated use of words such as `delve`, `crucial`, `intricate`, `tapestry`, `testament`, `pivotal`, `vibrant`, `underscore`, `garner`, `meticulous`, `interplay`, metaphorical `landscape`, vague-adjective `key`, `robust`, `valuable`, `enduring`, `enhance`, `highlight`, `showcase`, and `foster`.

Do not solve this with a thesaurus. Determine what the sentence is actually saying and write that.

## 11. Conclusion templates

Watch for sections or endings built from formula rather than new content:

- `Despite its strengths, X faces several challenges...`
- `Future prospects...`
- `In conclusion...`
- `Overall...`
- `In summary...`

If the conclusion merely repeats the piece, remove it. If the genre requires a conclusion, make it synthesize a real decision, consequence, or unresolved issue.

## 12. Decorative structure

AI output often over-formats ordinary information with tiny sections, bold-label bullets, title-case headings, or tables that add no useful comparison.

Use prose when prose is clearer. Use a table only when rows and columns reveal relationships the reader benefits from comparing.

## 13. Em-dash punch-up

Repeated em dashes often become a default way to create drama, insert correction, or make a clause feel important. This plugin uses no em dashes. Recast the sentence rather than swapping each dash for the same punctuation mark.

## 14. Chat residue

Finished artifacts should not accidentally contain assistant-to-user filler such as `Certainly!`, `Of course!`, `I hope this helps`, `Would you like...`, `let me know`, or `here is a more detailed breakdown`.

Keep such language only when the requested artifact is itself conversational and the phrase belongs to the speaker.

## 15. Knowledge-gap speculation

Watch for model disclaimers such as `as of my last knowledge update`, `based on available information`, `specific details are limited`, followed by plausible-sounding filler.

When information is absent, say what is known and stop. A gap in the source is not permission to invent connective tissue.

## 16. Placeholder leakage

Remove unfilled template language, bracketed placeholders, generic dates, fake quotations, or instructions to the user that were accidentally left inside the artifact.

## 17. Fiction-specific abstraction

Common weak shortcuts include:

- `felt something tighten/settle/twist`
- `went still`
- `went quiet`
- `went cold`
- a vague `this` or `that` with no clear antecedent
- italicized realization lines that tell the reader what the scene already established

Replace these only when the concrete alternative improves the scene. Do not add decorative sensory detail merely to avoid a phrase.

## 18. Floating and ping-pong dialogue

A sustained exchange of bare dialogue lines can disconnect speech from bodies, location, POV, and competing intentions. Ground dialogue through action, perception, thought, interruption, and scene movement where those beats naturally belong.

Do not convert every line into `dialogue + gesture`. Mechanical grounding is another template. The scene should continue happening while people talk.

Question-and-answer chains also flatten character agendas. Let speakers evade, redirect, interrupt, act on information, or answer incompletely when that behavior fits the character.

## 19. False thematic endings

LLM scenes often append one final sentence explaining what the moment meant, broadening it into a theme, or producing a quotable mic-drop.

If the scene already landed, stop. Do not replace the deleted kicker with a different polished kicker.

## 20. Reused rhetoric across voices

Repeated sentence architectures, punchline structures, agreement echoes, and identical emotional shorthand make characters and chapters sound generated from the same template.

When revising a multi-character piece, compare how different speakers form questions, disagree, hedge, swear, explain, and stop talking. Preserve differences rather than standardizing them.

## 21. Semantic beat stacking and staccato cadence

Semantic beat stacking occurs when related actions, perceptions, reactions, interpretations, or consequences are repeatedly separated into their own sentences without a real shift in thought, emphasis, or event. Sentence length is secondary. A medium-length sentence inserted among several short ones does not exempt the surrounding sequence, and a mixed run of short and medium-length sentences can still read like a shot list.

The examples below illustrate structure, not content. Apply the same test to any character or narrator and across genres, POVs, tenses, voices, and scene types. The pattern can appear in action, introspection, description, memory, dialogue-adjacent narration, memoir, or narrative nonfiction. Do not compare a passage's names or wording to the fixtures; compare the narrative functions of its sentences and the relationships among their beats.

Audit by narrative function. Reduce each sentence to the job it performs, such as `action -> result -> reaction -> action -> result -> interpretation`. If those beats all belong to one continuous movement of scene or thought but each has been given its own sentence, the paragraph architecture is defective. Scan across adjacent one-sentence paragraphs as well as within conventional paragraphs.

Short-sentence counts remain useful only as a warning signal. Four or more consecutive sentences or lines at roughly eight to ten words or fewer deserve immediate scrutiny, but do not require that threshold before acting. The problem becomes more obvious when several of these features occur together:

- repeated noun-or-pronoun plus verb openings
- one action, perception, result, or interpretation assigned to each sentence
- action, perception, interpretation, and reaction split into separate beats
- a longer sentence that briefly varies the surface rhythm but preserves the one-beat-per-sentence structure
- line or paragraph breaks used to manufacture intensity without a real change in thought, speaker, or event

Example of the unwanted pattern:

```text
Light caught one eye.
Pain flashed behind it.
A screw dropped toward his hand.
Peter saw rust in the threads.
The tip was slightly flattened.
He recoiled.
```

A natural rewrite establishes relationships among the same details:

```text
Afternoon light struck Peter's eye, sending pain through his skull just as a steel screw tumbled point-first toward his hand. He caught the rust in one turning groove and the slight flattening at its tip before he recoiled.
```

Do not fix the problem by mechanically joining every sentence with `and`. Decide which events are simultaneous, which perception belongs inside an action, which details can share a phrase, and where emphasis actually deserves a sentence boundary.

Short sentences and fragments remain useful for panic, impact, interruption, shock, comic timing, or a strongly established voice. Preserve them when the surrounding prose makes the intent clear. Once the charged moment passes, return to varied sentence lengths and normal paragraph development instead of sustaining the effect by default.

Mixed-length example of the unwanted pattern:

```text
Peter stayed there long enough to be sure.
The ache never started.
His shoulders sagged.
He turned toward the sink and reached out, expecting his hand to hit porcelain.
It did.
What bothered him was that he had known where it would be.
Peter drew his hand back and stood without touching anything.
```

The fourth and sixth sentences are longer, but they do not break the semantic stack. The passage still advances one isolated beat at a time: waiting, result, reaction, action, result, interpretation, reaction.

A structural rewrite establishes relationships among those beats and removes the unnecessary boundary around each one:

```text
Peter waited, but the ache never came, and his shoulders loosened. When he turned toward the sink and reached out, his hand found the porcelain exactly where he expected it. He pulled back without touching anything else, disturbed by the certainty that had guided him.
```

When semantic beat stacking is the defect, do not polish the original sentences in place. Rebuild the paragraph through causality, simultaneity, subordination, and POV attention. Turn some information into clauses, group related details, and remove unnecessary beats. In edit mode, this structural correction overrides the preference for minimal sentence-level changes.

## 22. Authorial-management leakage and negative-space narration

Finished prose sometimes reports that a character did not ask, test, investigate, pursue, notice, decide, or understand something because the prompt or outline forbade that development. The sentence exists for the author or model, not for the character or reader. Similar leakage announces that a question can wait, another problem matters more, enough information has been gathered, or this is not the time for an experiment.

Unwanted:

```text
Mara noticed how quickly he had crossed the room, but she did not ask about it. There were more important problems to deal with first.
```

If the supported scene action is immediate first aid, narrate that action instead:

```text
Mara shoved the first-aid kit into his hands and pointed him toward the chair. "Sit down before you fall down."
```

Do not replace leakage by inventing an action or line that the source does not support. In edit mode, omit the denied possibility and continue with the next established beat.

Negative narration is valid when the character actively expects, considers, resists, or chooses against something and the absence changes the situation or reveals character:

```text
The engine should have been loud enough to hear from the hallway. He heard nothing.
```

The test is functional. Ask whether the negative beat belongs to the character's experience or exists mainly to reassure the author that a constraint was obeyed. Do not let outline language, discovery-budget logic, continuity management, or revision decisions leak into the narrator's voice.

## 23. Repetition without development

Once a condition has been demonstrated clearly enough for the reader to understand it, another occurrence must earn its space. A new example should alter consequence, knowledge, relationship, plan, risk, limits, reliability, contrast, or immediate circumstances. Moving the same phenomenon to a different object is not development by itself.

Unwanted:

```text
The lettering on the bottle sharpened until he could see flaws in the ink.
The wood grain on the desk separated into tiny fibers.
Individual threads became visible in the curtain too.
```

Compressed:

```text
The lettering on the bottle sharpened until flaws appeared in the ink. He looked away before the headache returned.
```

A later recurrence can be summarized when its consequence matters more than another demonstration:

```text
The same problem followed him into the kitchen, so he kept his eyes lowered and moved by memory.
```

The same rule applies to intensity. Do not use several neighboring sentences to restate that a threat is closer, a loss is real, or an impossible event continues. Keep the strongest formulation and the beats that change perception or action.

Sensory evidence also needs a shared purpose. Do not assign every visible, audible, tactile, or environmental detail its own sentence merely because the POV can perceive it. Select or group details according to attention, recognition, danger, decision, atmosphere, or mood. Greater sensory capacity does not require exhaustive reporting.

Inventory:

```text
Dust covered the shelf. A crack ran through the window. The curtains were faded. Paint had peeled beside the door.
```

Purposeful grouping:

```text
Dust coated most of the room, but the handle of the locked cabinet had been wiped clean.
```

Preserve repetition when it creates escalation, establishes a limit or reliable pattern, carries a deliberate motif, or produces a distinct emotional or sensory experience. The defect is repeated proof with no development.

## 24. Procedural bookkeeping

Fiction does not need to record every retrieval, adjustment, crossing, opening, closing, placement, or intermediate motion required to complete a simple task. When several mundane actions serve one intention, compress them around that intention.

Unwanted:

```text
Rina opened the cabinet. She moved two bottles aside. Behind them she found the bandages. She took down the box and pulled out a roll of gauze.
```

Compressed:

```text
Rina dug through the cabinet until she found the gauze behind the medicine bottles.
```

Expand the procedure when a step contains an obstacle, discovery, consequential mistake, emotional hesitation, physical limitation, important choice, suspense, ritual, evidence of expertise or incompetence, concealment, or physical comedy. Completeness of bodily bookkeeping is not immersion by itself.

## 25. Post-event micro-interpretation

After an action, perception, or consequence lands clearly, LLM prose often adds a short verdict that classifies the event for the reader: `That was worse`, `That mattered`, `That was enough`, `That was a problem`, `He could not dismiss that`, or `She did not like that`.

Unwanted:

```text
The lock clicked open even though she had never entered the code. That was impossible. She stepped back.
```

Direct:

```text
The lock clicked open beneath her hand. She stepped back from the door.
```

An interpretation earns its place when it changes belief or behavior and the relationship is made specific:

```text
The second sample produced the same result, and he stopped blaming the first reading on a faulty sensor.
```

Keep a short verdict when its voice, timing, or subjective rupture is the point. Remove it when it serves as routine punctuation after a beat whose meaning is already legible.

## 26. Dialogue that keeps gathering facts

Question-and-answer dialogue often continues collecting symptoms, evidence, motives, or minor confirmations after a character already has enough information to take a position. At that point, the exchange should normally move toward what the speakers want done, fear, conceal, resist, or decide.

Unwanted interview rhythm:

```text
"Does your head hurt?"
"Yes."
"Are you dizzy?"
"A little."
"Did you eat?"
"No."
"Do your eyes hurt too?"
"Yes."
```

Decision-shaped dialogue:

```text
She took one look at him shielding his eyes and pushed the car keys into her pocket. "You're pale, you're dizzy and you can barely look at me. We're going to a doctor."
```

Do not use narration to announce that a character has heard enough, stopped interrogating, or moved to the larger issue. Let a demand, refusal, decision, interruption, or action demonstrate the shift.

Characters also need not answer every question in order or to completion. A reply may address only the urgent part, reject the premise, anticipate a follow-up, redirect, evade, or be interrupted by action. Use these possibilities when they belong to the speaker, not as a mechanical requirement to make every conversation disorderly.

Further questioning is valid when it adds consequential information or performs another dramatic function, including power, denial, reassurance, delay, obsession, persuasion, formal examination, interrogation, or technical diagnosis. Dramatize only the questions whose answers or interpersonal pressure matter.

## 27. Flat composition and missing syntactic hierarchy

Semantic beat stacking often begins during composition. The prose is generated as separate units of action, perception, result, reaction, and interpretation, after which an editing pass merely joins the sentences. Prevent the defect by composing around a continuous unit of attention, thought, conversation, action, or physical movement from the outset.

Shot-list composition:

```text
Lena heard the window break.
She turned.
Glass scattered across the floor.
A man climbed through the frame.
He had a knife.
Lena backed toward the kitchen.
```

Composition organized around movement and attention:

```text
The window broke behind Lena, and she turned as glass scattered across the floor. A man was already forcing himself through the frame, one hand braced against the sill and a knife in the other, which sent her backing toward the kitchen before he had both feet inside.
```

The improved version does more than lengthen sentences. It establishes simultaneity, directs attention, distinguishes the intruder's arrival from supporting visual information, and connects Lena's retreat to what she sees.

Prefer syntactic hierarchy whenever one event causes another, one perception occurs during an action, or one detail qualifies another.

Flat:

```text
Jonah opened the envelope. His hands were shaking. He saw the hospital logo. He stopped.
```

Hierarchical:

```text
Jonah opened the envelope with shaking hands and stopped when he saw the hospital logo at the top of the page.
```

Do not subordinate every beat indiscriminately. Primary actions still need room, and some moments deserve a clean sentence boundary. Avoid clauses that become difficult to follow, dangling modifiers, excessive conjunctions, and habitual trailing participial phrases. A participial phrase should express a real relationship such as simultaneity or consequence, not decorate the sentence or append superficial interpretation.

Short sentences remain useful when the sentence itself deserves unusual weight:

```text
The gun went off.
```

Resume connected prose after the emphasized beat unless the fragmentation continues to serve a specific dramatic function:

```text
The gun went off. Lena ducked as the bullet struck the wall beside her, showering her hair and shoulders with plaster.
```

Paragraphs should also form coherent units. A new paragraph normally signals a change in speaker, focus, action, thought, time, location, or emphasis. Speaker changes and form-specific conventions remain valid reasons for a break. Isolating every action or perception in its own paragraph does not make it important.

In ordinary narrative prose, developed multi-sentence paragraphs should substantially outnumber isolated one-sentence paragraphs. Treat a chapter dominated by one-sentence and two-sentence paragraphs as a structural warning unless the requested voice or form calls for that pattern. This is not a quota, and mechanically merging unrelated paragraphs is not a repair. Construct each paragraph around a coherent unit of scene.

For fiction generation and substantial fiction rewriting, treat the first composed pass as provisional. Before returning it, inspect adjacent paragraph runs and action-perception sequences, repair accidental shot-list architecture, and confirm that syntactic weight matches narrative importance. The user should receive the repaired version first rather than having to request a second cleanup pass.