The public rulepack
Every rule.
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67 named checks, each with a confidence level and an explanation of what evidence it reads.
Combined evidence
Several weak signals become persuasive when they cluster across a paragraph or document.
1 ruleInflated significance
Grand claims about importance, legacy, or “broader trends”.
4 rulesCopula Avoidance
“stands/serves as a …” dressing up a plain “is a …”.
Light Verb Role
“plays a … role”, importance asserted, not shown.
Participial Appendage
Trailing “-ing” clause that editorialises the main clause.
Significance Idioms
Fixed “inflated significance” idioms (rich tapestry, testament to …).
Negative parallelism
“Not only… but also”, “It’s not X, it’s Y”, “X, not Y”.
5 rulesBinary Outcome Frame
Mirrored clauses compress a graded process into a polished right-versus-wrong outcome pair.
Corrective Antithesis
The “X, not Y” staged contrast, a modern-AI cadence that adds no information.
Negative Contrast
A negative declaration followed by a dramatic positive redefinition.
Negative List Buildup
Repeatedly lists what something is not before revealing the point.
Negative Parallelism
“Not (only) X but (also) Y”, a signature LLM cadence.
Promotional puffery
Travel-brochure / press-release language and marketing verbs.
1 ruleVague attribution
Unnamed “experts”, “studies”, and “observers”.
8 rulesAbsolute Claim
An absolute or universal claim that may exceed the evidence or omit its scope.
Claim Evidence Gap
Nearby prose stacks outcome claims without measurements, sources, examples, or a mechanism.
Undefined Key Term
A central term is introduced indefinitely, repeated across the document, and asked about without being defined.
Unsupported Certainty
Confidence language that asserts a conclusion without showing the evidence.
Unsupported Comparison
A comparative, superlative, or outcome claim without an explicit benchmark in the phrase.
Vague Attribution
A bare, generic subject asserting a “that …” clause. Name who, or cut it.
Vague Declarative
An abstract announcement or vague “this approach…” claim that may need a concrete subject.
Vague Quantifier
A broad population claim without a named sample, source, or scope.
Chatbot voice
Editorialising asides and reader-collaboration filler.
9 rulesChatbot Idioms
Editorialising / chatbot filler idioms (it’s worth noting …).
Dramatic Fragment
A short transition is isolated as a sentence to manufacture drama.
Implementation Detail Pileup
A passage piles up identifiers, qualifications, and exceptions before establishing the normal behavior.
Modal Redundancy
Repeats modality after two possibilities already establish the outcome.
Outline Conclusion
A canned “challenges and future prospects” ending instead of a specific conclusion.
Premature Closure
A summary aside announces that an explanation is complete even though the paragraph immediately continues.
Rhetorical Scaffolding
Announces, dramatizes, or reassures around a point instead of stating it.
Semantic Redundancy
A nearby sentence or paragraph repeats the same argument without adding concrete support.
Throat Clearing
“it is important to note that …”. If it matters, just say it.
AI vocabulary
Words LLMs reach for far more often than people do.
2 rulesHidden or false agency
Passive actor hiding and abstractions made to act like people.
5 rulesAgentless Opener
Telegraphic verbless opener spliced with an “and it …” clause, the doer never appears.
Agentless Rationale
Subjectless verb-led explanations accumulate into implementation-trace cadence instead of ordinary reader-facing prose.
False Agency
An abstraction is made to act like a person instead of naming the actor.
Passive Actor Hiding
A passive clause hides who performed the action.
Passive Voice Density
Several nearby sentences rely on passive voice, making the process harder to follow.
Hedging seesaw
Relentless “While X… However, Y”, a position never taken.
1 rulePerformed voice
Sincerity narrated at the reader, announced candor, filler intensifiers, staged setups.
4 rulesFiller Intensifiers
Sincerity adverbs (genuinely, truly, really) doing the believing for the reader.
Performed Candor
Announcing your own honesty (“to be transparent”, “I’ll be honest”) instead of enacting it.
Performed Revelation
Repeated questions, metaphors, and compressed payoffs make an explanation sound like prepared revelations.
Setup Fragment
A noun-rooted fragment (“One thing I wanted to …”) that stages a point instead of making it.
Rule of three
Reflexive triads of adjectives or phrases.
1 ruleFormulaic transitions
Sentence-opening “Moreover,”, “Furthermore,”, “In conclusion,”.
2 rulesFormatting tells
Em-dash spray, mixed quote styles, emoji, leftover chatbot artifacts.
4 rulesEm Dash Overuse
Locally clustered or globally habitual em-dash use.
Emoji
Decorative emoji in formal prose.
Generation Artifacts
Leftover chatbot citation artifacts (oaicite, turn0search0, …).
Mixed Quotes
Straight and curly double quotes mixed in one document, a paste seam.
Uniform rhythm
Sentence lengths and openings fall into a machine-like cadence.
5 rulesComma Splice
Two independent clauses joined only by a comma; clipped cases can perform breeziness.
Headline Fragment
An explanatory passage opens with a noun-heavy headline fragment instead of a complete statement.
Referential Compression
Several nearby sentences open with bare pronouns instead of carrying the subject forward explicitly.
Repeated Sentence Frame
Several nearby sentences repeat the same dependency frame and cadence.
Uniform Rhythm
Sentence lengths cluster tightly enough to produce a machine-like drone.
Reading load
Passages and documents that introduce, retain, or reconnect more than the reader can comfortably track.
9 rulesConcept Introduction Burst
A passage introduces many recurring concepts before the reader has time to absorb them.
Paragraph Load
A long paragraph hides changes of subject or purpose inside one block.
Procedure Thread Detour
Three numbered steps leave an output unused for one step and then resume it, suggesting that the middle step interrupts the procedure handoff.
Relationship Pileup
A passage rapidly changes the relationships among a small set of participants.
Sentence Load
A sentence combines enough length, clauses, labels, or asides to overload the main point.
Sustained Buffer Pressure
The document repeatedly adds active entities and relationships faster than it releases or stabilizes them.
Undefined Decision Stack
The document accumulates decision standards such as relevant or sufficient without saying how a reader or system should apply them.
Unoriented Reactivation
A sentence resumes entities or relationships that have already left the active reading context.
Unresolved Idea Stack
The document asks the reader to retain several promised explanations or defers one for too long.
Jargon
Terms and noun clusters that make readers reconstruct the meaning.
2 rulesDirectness
Abstract setup and vague references that delay the concrete point.
3 rulesAbstract Reference Chain
Nearby sentences keep referring to generic problems, shapes, paths, or capabilities instead of naming the concrete facts.
Fragment Chain
Several nearby prose fragments omit their subjects or main clauses and read like compressed notes.
Label Led Explanation
Nearby paragraphs or list items repeatedly open with bold headline fragments before explaining the concrete behavior.
Economy
Repeated asides and commentary that restate rather than explain.
1 rule