When the client edit sounds like AI
Copy is where the accusation hurts most, because the client is paying for a voice. A landing page, a launch email, a LinkedIn post: it comes back with “can you make this sound less AI?” The honest answer is to find the line that lost the voice, not to sprinkle in slang.
The words clients name, and what they are really seeing
In copywriting threads, the named words change every few months. The shapes underneath do not:
- “Quietly” and “genuinely”. Small intensifiers that can be removed without changing the meaning. They feel like a person being sincere; on the page they often read as a model being careful.
- The rule of three. Three adjectives, three benefits, three clauses. Writers were taught this long before models existed, so the pattern alone proves nothing. It becomes a tell when every paragraph has the same three-beat rhythm.
- The balanced contrast. “It's not a tool, it's a partner.” The second half is the first half with a bigger hat on.
- Correct, composed and airless. Every sentence is grammatical; no sentence gives the reader a reason to read the next one. This is the note clients feel but cannot name.
An em dash is not a confession. Neither is a contraction, a short sentence or a word your client learned last month. The question is whether the paragraph has a person in it.
What to do before the next send
- Check the opening and the CTA. Those are the two places a reader decides whether to stay. Paste each into the checker separately; a full-page paste hides the weak paragraph in the average.
- Replace one abstraction with one fact. “A seamless onboarding experience” becomes “a setup that takes four minutes and asks for one password”. The second line is not prettier; it is more believable.
- Cut one sentence you like. If the paragraph still works without it, it was decoration. If it collapses, it was carrying the meaning; keep it and cut something else.
- Read the headline out loud. If you would not say it to a client across a table, it is probably the line that reads machine-made.
The handoff note that prevents the loop
When you send the revision, name what you changed and why. “I cut the wind-up in the second paragraph and replaced ‘seamless’ with the setup time from your brief.” That gives the client something to react to besides a feeling. It also shows the work is editorial, not cosmetic.
If the client sends back a detector percentage, do not argue the number. Ask which sentence felt off, and whether the concern is tone, clarity or trust. Those are three different edits. A percentage is not a brief.
What the checker does for copy
It marks the sentences that carry the shapes above and explains each mark. The first 300 words can be rewritten free once a day; a signed-in account gets up to 10 full rewrites a day of up to 1,000 words. It does not store the text and it does not give you an authorship score to put in a deck.
Use it as a second reader, not as a verdict. The client hired you because a person can hear when a line is doing nothing. The tool is there to point at the line faster.
Paste a few hundred words. You get the flagged sentences with a reason for each, then the opening rewritten in your own voice — free, no account.
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