Detached adverbs acting as confidence intensifiers
The AI Tell I know you want to read about
When you edit the amount of AI copy that I do, you begin to notice the robot's default language to such a degree that it takes over your brain.
Look at this sentence:
"The workflow was rebuilt to cut manual entry directly."
Is there anything wrong with it? Not really. It's bloody boring SaaS copy and it's pretty normal – the sort of stuff that would sit on a brand's blog or brochure or something. But it screams AI.
Claude and ChatGPT love including what I call "confidence intensifiers" when talking to users or writing content. You've all seen it, when you ask your robot a question and it gives you a three-paragraph reply, one of which starts: "Here's the main takeaway explicitly."
Take a phrase like "the mechanism is worth stating plainly" – the adverb isn't adding anything factual, just tone. It makes the sentence sound more assured, more finished, without actually telling you anything "worth stating" didn't already say.
That detached adverb tacked onto the end – plainly, directly, specifically, entirely – offers no benefit to the sentence. You could write "The workflow was rebuilt to cut manual entry" and it would be fine. The adverb sounds like it's stressing the point, but it isn't attached to anything specific enough to actually narrow or strengthen the claim. It's confidence for confidence's sake.
If you're trying to pass your AI content off as human-written expertise, then little tells like this diminish your work. If you really want to keep the adverb, shift it into the clause and check it's actually doing something (👈 like my "actually" just there).
AI Tell (detached adverb): "This model was trained on medical imaging data entirely."
Legitimate inclusion (attached adverb): "This model was trained entirely on medical imaging data."
Here the adverb "entirely" sits alongside "on medical imaging data," making an exclusivity claim (this data only, nothing else). Detach the adverb by shoving it to the end and it doesn't make that claim – it just sits there sounding confident.
This is the sort of AI Tell that only experienced editors see. It's also the type of tell that litters LinkedIn posts, commercial content and blogs – because it's not being edited properly. One detached adverb is fine, but when you're trying to sell your service through a landing page and there are stray adverbs everywhere, the Tell is really, really obvious.
Email joe@shortstory.ltd if you want a proper editor overseeing your AI content.