SPOTTING AI TEXT

Signs of AI writing: 24 tells, the data, and why none is proof

A reader's field guide to text that might come from a chatbot. Every sign is grouped by level, rated by how much it tells you, and tied to the research or the Wikipedia editors who documented it.

Scan my text free Updated

Short answer

The clearest signs of AI writing are chatbot leftovers: lines like “Certainly! Here is”, unfilled placeholders, citation tokens such as oaicite, and links ending in utm_source=chatgpt.com. Fabricated references come next. Clusters of AI-favored words (delve, underscore, tapestry), trailing -ing commentary and formula endings are moderate signs. Single words, em dashes and a formal tone prove very little, and both people and detectors misjudge human text often.

THE CATALOGUE

What are the signs of AI writing?

Twenty-four signs in six levels, from single words up to fake references. Try the paragraph first, then read the full list. Each example is a line we wrote to show the pattern.

TRY IT FIRST

Spot the tells in this paragraph

A short bio we wrote the way a chatbot often does. Click any dotted phrase to see which sign it is and how much it proves.

Illustration
garden-bio.docx, example we wrote

Certainly! Here is a short bio for the garden page. Nestled in the heart of Riverside, the Elm Street Garden stands as a testament to community spirit, fostering connection and pride. It's not just a garden. It's a living classroom. Our workshops are inclusive, hands-on, and transformative. Experts argue that shared gardens improve wellbeing. turn0search0 **Key takeaway:** every plot counts. Founded in [YEAR], the garden welcomes everyone. Visit elmstreetgarden.org/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

SIGNS FOUND

0 of 11

Click a dotted phrase to inspect it.

  • Strong
  • Moderate
  • Weak alone
01

Word choice

  • #1AI vocabulary in clusters

    Moderate

    Additionally, this intricate interplay underscores a pivotal shift in the evolving landscape.

    Words on Wikipedia's watch list such as delve, underscore, tapestry and pivotal. One is noise; many, in text written after 2022, is a strong tell.

  • #2Significance puffery

    Moderate

    The festival stands as a testament to the town's enduring legacy.

    Small subjects inflated into symbols: a testament, a pivotal moment, setting the stage for, an indelible mark.

  • #3Brochure language

    Moderate

    Nestled in the heart of the valley, the village boasts breathtaking natural beauty.

    Travel-ad wording in a text that should be neutral: nestled, vibrant, renowned, boasts, a diverse array.

  • #4Unnamed authorities

    Moderate

    Experts argue that the policy has drawn significant attention from observers.

    Industry reports, observers and some critics who are never named or linked. Check whether a real source follows.

02

Sentence patterns

  • #5Trailing -ing commentary

    Moderate

    The team shipped the update in March, highlighting its commitment to users.

    A participle bolted onto a fact to add meaning. PNAS researchers measured these clauses at 2 to 5 times the human rate in instruction-tuned models.

  • #6Negative parallelism

    Weak alone

    It's not just a tool, but a new way of working.

    Found in 6% of ChatGPT chats in July 2025 in the Washington Post's analysis. Speechwriters love it too.

  • #7Rule of three

    Weak alone

    The app is fast, reliable, and secure.

    Triplets of adjectives or short phrases, used by reflex. Human writers use them constantly, so they only count in a crowd.

  • #8Avoiding plain is and has

    Weak alone

    The library serves as a hub and features a reading room.

    Serves as, stands as, represents, boasts and features where is or has would do. Wikipedia counts plain phrasing as a human sign.

03

Tone and content

  • #9Chat leftovers

    Strong

    Certainly! Here is a revised version of your paragraph. I hope this helps!

    Lines addressed to the person who asked the chatbot, pasted along with the answer. Few innocent explanations exist.

  • #10Knowledge and source hedges

    Strong

    While specific details are limited in available sources, as of my last knowledge update...

    The model explaining what it does not know. Knowledge-cutoff lines are older (2022 to 2023) but still turn up.

  • #11Placeholder text

    Strong

    Founded in [YEAR] by [Founder Name], the company... Published 2025-XX-XX.

    Template slots nobody filled in, like [Describe the specific section] or PASTE_URL_HERE.

  • #12Formula endings

    Moderate

    Despite these challenges, the town's future looks bright.

    A closing paragraph about challenges, legacy or future outlook, attached to topics that never needed one.

04

Formatting

  • #13Markdown in plain text

    Moderate

    **Benefits:** faster load times. ## Overview

    Asterisks and pound signs that a chat window turns into bold and headings, left raw in an email, form or wiki.

  • #14Bold-header bullet lists

    Weak alone

    Speed: pages load faster. / Cost: plans start lower. / Support: help is always on.

    Every bullet opens with a bolded label and a colon. Common in slide decks too.

  • #15Title Case and scattered bold

    Weak alone

    Key Takeaways And Next Steps

    Headings in Title Case and bolded phrases mid-paragraph. Many style guides call for both, so treat it lightly.

  • #16Emoji bullets

    Moderate

    ✅ Faster onboarding ✅ Better retention 🚀 Ready to scale

    By July 2025, 70% of ChatGPT messages in the Post's sample had an emoji, and the green check appeared 11 times more often than in human writing.

05

Punctuation and characters

  • #17Em dashes

    Weak alone

    The plan was simple — ship fast, learn faster.

    A famous tell that is fading: OpenAI made ChatGPT follow no-dash instructions in November 2025. More in why AI uses em dashes.

  • #18Curly quotes

    Weak alone

    She called it “a turning point” in the report.

    Wikipedia notes ChatGPT and DeepSeek typically use curly quotes while Gemini and Claude typically do not. Word and macOS add them automatically.

  • #19Hidden Unicode characters

    Weak alone

    A zero-width space between two words, or a no-break space after a comma.

    Copying from chat apps, web pages and word processors can carry them. See the invisible character detector guide; they are not a watermark either, as this comparison explains.

  • #20Chatbot citation tokens

    Strong

    :contentReference[oaicite:16]{index=16} turn0search0 [cite: 1] [web:1]

    Internal markup from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity that leaks when an answer is copied. Wikipedia editors log each new format.

06

Citations and links

  • #21utm_source=chatgpt.com

    Strong

    example.org/report?utm_source=chatgpt.com

    ChatGPT tags links it cites with this tracking parameter, so the URL records where it came from.

  • #22Broken identifiers

    Strong

    ISBN 978-1-23-456789-4 (checksum fails); a DOI that opens an unrelated paper.

    Invented references. One public database lists over 2,000 legal decisions involving AI-hallucinated content.

  • #23Sources that do not say it

    Moderate

    A book cited with no page number for a very specific claim.

    Real sources attached to claims they never make. Only opening the source catches this.

  • #24Bulk dead links

    Moderate

    Five of eight reference links return 404 and have no archived copy.

    Links that never existed leave no trace in the Internet Archive. Old links that rotted usually do.

Most of these patterns come from Signs of AI writing, the guide Wikipedia editors keep for spotting undisclosed chatbot text. The strength ratings are ours, based on how often each sign shows up in human writing too. If you are the one writing and want to remove these habits, the Claude humanizer guide covers the editing side.

WEIGH THE EVIDENCE

How strong is each sign of AI writing?

A chat leftover and an em dash are both called signs, but they are not close in weight. Start at the top of the ladder.

STRENGTH OF EVIDENCE

Not every sign is worth the same

Pick a rung. Higher rungs are harder to explain any other way; lower rungs show up in human writing every day.

Strong

  • “Certainly! Here is…” or “I hope this helps”
  • [Insert date] style placeholders
  • oaicite, turn0search0, [cite: 1]
  • ?utm_source=chatgpt.com in a link
  • “As of my last knowledge update…”

Leftovers from a chat window. There are very few innocent reasons for a person to type these into a finished article or essay.

What to do: Treat as high confidence that a chatbot touched the text. Still ask how it was used: drafting, translating and copyediting are different things.

Placement is our reading of Wikipedia's Signs of AI writing guide and the false positive studies cited below. It ranks evidence, not probability.
Signs of AI writing by type, false positive risk and the best way to check
Sign typeWhat it looks likeHuman false positivesBest check
Chat leftovers and tokensAct firstCertainly!, [YEAR], oaicite, utm_source=chatgpt.comVery lowSearch the text for the strings
Fabricated referencesAct firstDead DOIs, failing ISBNs, quotes no one saidLow (people mistype, rarely invent)Open every source
Vocabulary clustersMany watch-list words in one passageMediumCount per paragraph, compare with older work
Sentence patterns-ing tails, not just X but Y, lists of threeHigh aloneOnly count alongside stronger signs
FormattingRaw asterisks, emoji bullets, bold labelsMedium to highAsk where the text was drafted
Punctuation and toneEm dashes, curly quotes, perfect grammarVery highIgnore unless other signs agree

Swipe to compare →

Chat leftovers and tokens

Act first
What it looks like
Certainly!, [YEAR], oaicite, utm_source=chatgpt.com
Human false positives
Very low
Best check
Search the text for the strings

Fabricated references

Act first
What it looks like
Dead DOIs, failing ISBNs, quotes no one said
Human false positives
Low (people mistype, rarely invent)
Best check
Open every source

Vocabulary clusters

What it looks like
Many watch-list words in one passage
Human false positives
Medium
Best check
Count per paragraph, compare with older work

Sentence patterns

What it looks like
-ing tails, not just X but Y, lists of three
Human false positives
High alone
Best check
Only count alongside stronger signs

Formatting

What it looks like
Raw asterisks, emoji bullets, bold labels
Human false positives
Medium to high
Best check
Ask where the text was drafted

Punctuation and tone

What it looks like
Em dashes, curly quotes, perfect grammar
Human false positives
Very high
Best check
Ignore unless other signs agree

Highlighted rows are the signs we would act on first. Risk levels are our summary of Wikipedia's guidance and the false positive studies cited further down.

CHECK WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE

Some signs are invisible. Show them.

Paste a suspect text and ClaudeClean lists hidden characters like zero-width spaces and no-break spaces, scanned in your browser. It is not an AI detector and gives no verdict. It shows you what is there.

  • 300 rewrite credits a month
  • 20,000 characters per request
  • .txt, .docx and .pdf files

AI WORDS LIST

Which words does AI overuse? What the data says

Lists of AI-sounding words are everywhere. These are the ones backed by measurements on millions of documents.

DATA · 15.1 MILLION ABSTRACTS

How far a few words jumped after ChatGPT

Kobak and colleagues compared 2024 word use in PubMed abstracts with what the pre-2023 trend predicted. A ratio of 1x means no change.

EXCESS RATIO, 2024 (OBSERVED ÷ EXPECTED)

  • “delves”
    28.0x
    28.0x expected
  • “underscores”
    13.8x
    13.8x expected
  • “showcasing”
    10.7x
    10.7x expected
0x10x20x30x

dashed line = 1x, the expected level

WORDS WITH EXCESS USE THAT YEAR

up to 190
454
20212024

The pandemic changed science vocabulary through topic words. The 2024 jump came from style words, and it was more than twice as wide.

Excess vocabulary in PubMed abstracts, Kobak et al. 2025
MeasureValue
delves, 2024 ratio28
underscores, 2024 ratio13.8
showcasing, 2024 ratio10.7
Excess words in 2021190
Excess words in 2024454
Source: Kobak et al., Science Advances 11(27), July 2025. Ratios are observed 2024 frequency over expected frequency. Hover or focus a bar for the value.

13.5%

Lower bound for 2024 PubMed abstracts processed with an LLM

Kobak et al., Science Advances 2025

40%

Estimated share in some subgroups of 2024 abstracts

Kobak et al., Science Advances 2025

100x+

How much more often GPT-4o used tapestry, palpable and camaraderie than humans

Reinhart et al., PNAS 2025

23%

Share of GPT-4o outputs in the study that contained tapestry

Reinhart et al., PNAS 2025

WIKIPEDIA WATCH LIST, GROUPED

Verbs
delve, underscore, highlight, showcase, foster, garner, bolster, emphasize, enhance, align with
Adjectives
pivotal, crucial, intricate, meticulous, robust, vibrant, enduring, valuable, key
Nouns
tapestry, testament, interplay, landscape (abstract), deep dive
Openers
Additionally, at the start of a sentence or paragraph

Kobak and colleagues counted 454 words used far more than expected in 2024 abstracts, against up to 190 in the COVID year of 2021. Most of the 2024 words were style words rather than topic words: 66% verbs and 14% adjectives, per the paper.

Word favorites move. The Washington Post found delve in about 1 in 1,000 ChatGPT chats by July 2025, while core rose fivefold and modern showed up in more than 8% of messages. A list built in 2024 already misses the newer habits.

Why these words? A COLING 2025 study found its results consistent with human feedback training playing a part. Nobody has shown it is the only cause.

HOW THE TELLS CHANGED

AI writing patterns from 2022 to 2026

Signs age. The ones that gave away 2023 text are not the ones that give away text today.

  1. Nov 30, 2022

    ChatGPT launches

    Wikipedia uses this date as a cutoff: edits made before it can be ruled out as chatbot text.
  2. 2022 to 2024

    Cutoff disclaimers and lectures

    Lines like “As of my last knowledge update” and “it's important to note” were common. Wikipedia now lists both as historical signs.
  3. Apr 2023

    Detectors meet non-native writers

    Stanford researchers show seven detectors flag 61% of TOEFL essays as AI on average (Liang et al.).
  4. Feb 2025

    Citation tokens leak into articles

    Around this time, editors start logging ChatGPT markup like oaicite and turn0search0 in pasted text. DeepSeek and Perplexity formats were logged later in 2025.
  5. Jul 2025

    Delve, measured

    Science Advances publishes the excess vocabulary study of 15.1 million abstracts (Kobak et al.). In ChatGPT itself, delve has already faded.
  6. Nov 2025

    The em dash gets a switch

    OpenAI makes ChatGPT follow no-em-dash instructions (Ars Technica), and TechCrunch calls Wikipedia's list the best guide to spotting AI writing.
  7. Mar 2026

    Wikipedia bans LLM-written articles

    The WP:LLM guideline prohibits using LLMs to generate or rewrite article content, with exceptions for translation and basic copyediting (WikiProject AI Cleanup).
  8. Jul 2026

    Model habits split

    The Economist reports that only Claude used em dashes more than professional writers, while ChatGPT used them less.
  9. Sep 2026

    Em dashes become a historical sign

    Wikipedia's guide dates em dash overuse to 2022 through September 2026, as newer models increasingly avoid the character.

WHERE YOU WILL SEE THEM

Signs of AI writing in the wild

The same signs look different on an encyclopedia page, in a feed and in a classroom.

WIKIPEDIA · AI CLEANUP

How an editor reads a suspicious draft

A made-up draft about a made-up bakery. Watch the order: vocabulary first, then the leftovers that are much harder to explain away, then the tag.

Illustration
The banner text is quoted from Wikipedia's {{AI-generated}} maintenance template. The draft, bakery, newspaper and book are invented for this example.

SOCIAL FEED

Five signs in one work post

A generic post we wrote in the style that fills professional feeds. The pins show up one by one; the legend says how much each one is worth.

Illustration
  1. 1

    Emoji bullets

    In the Washington Post's sample of ChatGPT messages, 70% had at least one emoji by July 2025, and ✅ showed up 11 times more often than in human writing.

  2. 2

    “Not just X, but Y”

    The same analysis found this frame in 6% of July 2025 chats. People use it too, so it counts only in company.

  3. 3

    Raw **asterisks**

    Bold headers typed as Markdown. The chat window renders them; a post box or email often shows the stars.

  4. 4

    Rule of three

    Three parallel items where one specific example would do. Weak alone, common in speeches and ads.

  5. 5

    Chat-style closer

    “Let me know” and offers of more help are on Wikipedia's list of collaborative phrases left over from a chat reply.

Count them together. Any one of these appears in plenty of human posts; all five in eight lines is what makes a reader stop.

Wikipedia

Drafts and new articles

Editors tag suspect pages with the AI-generated template and focus on hallucinated facts and fake sources more than on style.

Work

Posts, emails and cover letters

Formatting signs (emoji bullets, bold labels, raw asterisks) and chat closers stand out most here, since nobody checks references.

Reviews

Product and place reviews

Brochure language with no specifics (no dish named, no date, no price) is the giveaway in reviews, more than any single word.

THE LIMITS

Why none of these signs is proof

People who use chatbots a lot get good at spotting them. Everyone else, and most software, makes a lot of mistakes.

61%

Average rate at which seven detectors labeled non-native English essays as AI

Liang et al., Patterns 2023

97.8%

Of those human essays flagged by at least one of the seven detectors

Liang et al., Patterns 2023

72%

Of human-written texts that untrained educator raters labeled as AI

Cheng et al., Advances in Simulation 2025

1 of 300

Articles misjudged by the majority vote of five experienced LLM users

Russell et al., ACL 2025

Worth weighing

  • Chat leftovers. Greeting lines, placeholders, citation tokens and chatgpt.com tracking links.
  • Fabricated sources. Identifiers that fail, quotes nobody said, pages that do not exist.
  • Dense clusters. Several levels of signs in one short passage, in text written after 2022.
  • A sudden shift. Vocabulary or structure that does not match the writer's earlier work.

Not evidence on its own

  • Perfect grammar. Careful writers and spell checkers produce it every day.
  • A formal or bland tone. Wikipedia lists robotic-sounding prose as an ineffective indicator.
  • Transition words. However, moreover and additionally appear in decades of human writing.
  • A detector score. Wikipedia says the tools beat chance but have non-trivial error rates.

Simple English is not a sign

The writers most likely to be wrongly flagged are those writing in a second language, because their word choices are more predictable. In the Liang study, the same essays were flagged far less after ChatGPT was used to make their vocabulary more varied. Treat any sign as a reason to ask, never as a finding.

QUICK ANSWERS

Common questions about spotting AI text

Short answers to the questions people ask right after reading a list like this.

Do AI detectors work?

Partly. Wikipedia says tools like GPTZero and Pangram “perform better than random chance” but tells editors not to rely on them alone. Their errors fall hardest on non-native writers.

Would a watermark settle the question?

Only for the company that set it. Text watermarks such as Google's SynthID sit in word choices and are read with the provider's key, so readers cannot see them. The AI text watermarking guide covers who can check what, and this page covers Claude.

Is delve still a sign of AI?

Less than it was. It jumped 28-fold in 2024 science abstracts, then ChatGPT largely dropped it by mid-2025. Today it mostly marks text from 2023 and 2024 models, or people imitating them.

Can AI text show none of these signs?

Yes. A careful prompt plus a human edit can remove most of them, and newer models already avoid several. The signs catch lazy pasting far more reliably than deliberate use.
They can be disguised, but it will be hard to do away with them completely.
Source: Russell Brandom, TechCrunch, on the habits Wikipedia catalogues

THE READER'S CHECKLIST

How to tell if something is written by AI, step by step

Eight checks, cheapest and strongest first. Stop when you have enough to ask a fair question.

  1. 01

    Check the date first

    Text published before November 30, 2022, when ChatGPT launched, is very unlikely to be chatbot output. Version history and archive snapshots help.
  2. 02

    Look for chat leftovers

    Search for Certainly, I hope this helps, as of my last, oaicite, turn0search, [cite and utm_source=chatgpt.com. One hit outweighs a page of style signs.
  3. 03

    Open the references

    Click every link, look up every DOI and test every ISBN. Fabricated or mismatched sources are the most serious finding on this page.
  4. 04

    Count clusters, not words

    A single delve means nothing. Ten watch-list words, three -ing tails and a challenges paragraph in 300 words is a pattern.
  5. 05

    Look for first-hand detail

    Names, numbers, dates, places and small specifics only the writer would know are hard for a model to invent convincingly.
  6. 06

    Compare with earlier work

    A sudden shift in vocabulary, structure or polish from the same writer is a stronger signal than any list.
  7. 07

    Ask the writer about it

    People can explain why they made a choice, where a fact came from and what they left out. Keep the question neutral.
  8. 08

    Weigh it, do not convict

    Formal tone and simple vocabulary describe many second-language writers. Never act on a detector score or a style hunch alone.

ON THE OTHER SIDE

If you wrote it and it reads like AI

This page is for readers. Writers who see their own habits here have a different job.

Style

Edit the habits out

The Claude humanizer guide has before and after rewrites and a ten-pass edit checklist.

CLAUDECLEAN

See the characters, then clean up your own draft.

Paste text to find hidden Unicode in your browser. For your own writing, an optional rewrite with a non-Claude model removes common AI habits and shows a diff. No detector result is promised.

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3 zero-width1 soft hyphencleanable signals2

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03

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SOURCES

Research behind this guide to signs of AI writing

Numbers on this page come from these. The example sentences and strength ratings are ours.

Also cited: the educator study by Cheng et al. (19% overall accuracy), Juzek and Ward on why ChatGPT says delve, TechCrunch on Wikipedia's guide, Ars Technica on ChatGPT and em dashes, The Economist on model differences, WikiProject AI Cleanup, the AI-generated template and the AI Hallucination Cases database. The Washington Post analysis is also available via The Boston Globe. Want to check a text for hidden characters? Open the cleaner.

FAQ

Signs of AI writing FAQ.

The strongest are chatbot leftovers (Certainly! Here is..., placeholder brackets, citation tokens like oaicite, links ending in utm_source=chatgpt.com) and fabricated references. Next come dense clusters of AI-favored words, trailing -ing commentary, puffery and formula endings. Em dashes, curly quotes and formal tone prove little.
Check the date, search for chat leftovers, verify the sources, then look for clusters of signs rather than single words. Compare with the writer's earlier work and ask them about their choices. No method, human or software, gives certainty.
Studies of 2024 text found big jumps in delves (28 times the expected rate in PubMed abstracts), underscores and showcasing, and GPT-4o used tapestry over 100 times more than humans. Word favorites shift between model versions, so lists go stale.
Nobody knows for sure. A COLING 2025 study found its tests consistent with human feedback training playing a role. The word has also faded: by July 2025 it appeared in about 1 in 1,000 ChatGPT chats, per a Washington Post analysis.
Weakly at best. Writers used em dashes long before chatbots, OpenAI made ChatGPT follow no-dash instructions in November 2025, and Wikipedia's guide now files em dash overuse under historical signs.
They do better than chance but make errors. A Stanford-led study found seven detectors flagged 61% of essays by non-native English writers as AI on average. Wikipedia tells its editors not to rely on detectors alone.
It is the most complete public catalogue, built by editors who review AI-generated drafts, and TechCrunch called it the best guide available. Wikipedia itself warns that text with these signs is not always AI-generated.
Yes. Formal tone, perfect grammar and common transitions all appear in human writing, and in one study untrained raters labeled 72% of human texts as AI. Version history and drafts are the best defense.