The Manual Checklist Editors Use to Catch AI-Written Copy

Read It the Way an Editor Would

Most people scan a piece of writing once and move on. Catching AI-generated text takes a slower pass, closer to how a copy editor reads: not for meaning first, but for pattern. You're not asking 'does this make sense.' You're asking 'does this sound like it came from a person who was thinking while they typed.'

None of the checks below need software. They need a second read, a pen, and a habit of noticing what repeats. Run through all six before you form an opinion, because any single item on its own is weak evidence.

The Six-Point Read-Through

1. 1
   Check the emotional temperature

   AI drafts tend to sit at one setting the whole way through, never irritated, never delighted, never surprised. Human writing dips and spikes even in dry subject matter. If a piece about a product failure reads with the same calm as a piece about a product launch, that's worth flagging.

2. 2
   Count the hedges

   Look for phrases like 'it's important to note,' 'many experts believe,' or 'this can vary depending on the situation.' One or two are normal caution. A hedge every paragraph is a writer, or a model, avoiding a claim it can't back up.

3. 3
   Measure the paragraphs

   Grab a ruler or just eyeball the right margin. Paragraphs that all land within a line of each other, especially across a long piece, point to a template rather than a train of thought. People ramble in some spots and go terse in others.

4. 4
   Watch the transitions stack up

   'Additionally,' 'furthermore,' 'on the other hand' — these words exist for a reason, but AI text leans on them at the start of nearly every paragraph like scaffolding holding up the structure. Cross them out mentally and see if the piece still flows. If it collapses without them, that's a tell.

5. 5
   Test the sentence rhythm

   Read a paragraph out loud. If every sentence runs twelve to twenty words with a similar clause pattern, your mouth will notice before your eyes do. Real writers vary their pace — a short punch, then a longer explanation, then a fragment.

6. 6
   Chase down the specifics

   Any number, study, or named expert should be checkable. Search the study title. Look up the expert. A shocking number of AI-generated claims trace back to nothing — no paper, no researcher, no source, just a sentence that sounded authoritative enough to pass.

What Tends to Differ

Where This Checklist Runs Out of Road

This kind of manual read catches a lot, but it's not built for adversarial cases. Someone who's edited an AI draft into their own words will pass most of these checks without effort, because the mechanical patterns are exactly what gets smoothed out first. The checklist is a first filter for obvious cases, not a courtroom-grade test.

The one item worth pulling out and checking separately, no matter what else you find, is the citations. A fabricated study is a fact you can catch even when the prose around it reads perfectly natural. If you're staring at a paper full of references and don't want to chase each one down by hand, AI Humanizer Lab's citation checker will tell you quickly whether the sources in a piece of writing actually exist before you take the rest of the argument at face value.