I know you used AI to write that email, article, job description, SOP. And I don’t care – but my brain has begun to ignore anything that lacks signs of human effort.

And I blame Ole Lehmann, who wrote an article in January about the “17 AI slop writing patterns you need to cut immediately.”

Like the best AI, these elements of writing are based on how good humans communicate. Use one or two in your work and I won’t know for sure… but keep using the same patterns, and lots of them, and my attention span disappears as quickly as ChatGPT can draft a sonnet.

The 17 Patterns (You Have Been Warned)

Here is Ole’s excellent list. With great knowledge comes great awareness of slop all around you.

1. “No X. No Y. Just Z.” – The triple negative-positive structure AI loves to death.
2. “It’s not about X, it’s about Y” – This binary contrast appears in every AI-written post. Sometimes useful, but AI overuses it mercilessly.
3. Triple Threat Syndrome – AI learned that grouping things in threes makes “good writing.” So it does it constantly. Vary your rhythm. Two things. Four things. One thing. Mix it up.
4. “Game-changer” and “supercharge” – The moment I read either word, I assume a robot wrote it.
5. Overusing “real” – As in “real value”, “real impact”, “real results.” If you need to tell me it’s real, I’m suspicious.
6. “To your success” – Sign off like a human. (I use “With Love”, for example…)
7. Arrow overload – → When → every → point → has → an → arrow.
8. Emoji explosion – ChatGPT treats emojis like confetti. I don’t use emojis AT ALL.
9. Corporate verb disease – Use simple verbs. “Show” not “highlighting.” “Help” not “facilitating.” “Use” not “leverage.”
10. Thesaurus abuse – Don’t “utilise” when you can “use.” Write like you talk.
11. Hedging language – “It seems like”, “arguably”, “in many ways.” Either say it or don’t.
12. Short hook questions – “Ready to level up?” (No. Nobody has ever been “levelled up” by a LinkedIn post.)
13. “Enter: [thing]” – As if your product just walked through a door in a sitcom.
14. “And here’s the kicker” – AI’s favourite transition, which means you’re about to read the least kickery line in history.
15. Em dash overload – Look, I love an em dash (guilty). But AI uses them like punctuation seasoning on every sentence.
16. “X changed everything” – Did it though? Did it really change everything?
17. Symbol obsession – Say what happened. Say what you learned. Skip the literary analysis.

How I Actually Use AI for Writing

Most of the work I publish goes through four drafts – and I still find AI tools excellent at either a First Draft (when I’m staring at an empty page) or a Second Draft (when my waffle needs an edit).

The key is that drafts three and four are mine. That’s where the voice comes in, the quirks, the parenthetical asides that make you feel like you’re actually reading something a human wrote while drinking coconut water coffee in Southeast Asia.

AI is a tool. A bloody good one. But if your output reads like it was written by a committee of robots who all studied the same “How to Write Engaging Content” course – your audience will notice. Maybe not consciously. But their brain will do what mine does: tune out, scroll past, and ignore.

Awareness of these patterns will make you a better communicator – whether you use AI or not.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a First Draft to ask Claude about.