Deslop
Review the given text (or your own draft output) for AI writing tropes and rewrite to remove them. If no text is provided, review your most recent prose output in the conversation.
Tropes to detect and fix
Word choice
- Magic adverbs: "quietly", "deeply", "fundamentally", "remarkably", "arguably" used to inject false significance.
- Delve and friends: "delve", "certainly", "utilize", "leverage" (as verb), "robust", "streamline", "harness".
- Ornate nouns: "tapestry", "landscape", "paradigm", "synergy", "ecosystem", "framework" where simpler words work.
- "Serves as" dodge: replacing "is" with "serves as", "stands as", "marks", "represents".
Sentence structure
- Negative parallelism: "It's not X, it's Y" and variants ("not because X, but because Y", "The question isn't X. The question is Y.").
- Dramatic countdown: "Not X. Not Y. Just Z."
- Self-posed rhetorical Q&A: "The result? Devastating." / "The worst part? Nobody saw it coming."
- Anaphora abuse: repeating the same sentence opening 3+ times in succession.
- Tricolon abuse: back-to-back rule-of-three constructions.
- Filler transitions: "It's worth noting", "It bears mentioning", "Importantly", "Interestingly", "Notably".
- Superficial analyses: tacking "-ing" phrases onto sentences for shallow commentary ("highlighting its importance", "reflecting broader trends").
- False ranges: "from X to Y" where X and Y aren't on a real scale.
Paragraph structure
- Short punchy fragments: excessive one-sentence paragraphs for manufactured emphasis.
- Listicle in a trench coat: numbered points disguised as prose ("The first... The second... The third...").
Tone
- False suspense: "Here's the kicker", "Here's the thing", "Here's where it gets interesting".
- Patronizing analogy: "Think of it as...", "It's like a...".
- Futurism invite: "Imagine a world where...".
- False vulnerability: performative self-awareness or honesty.
- "The truth is simple": asserting clarity instead of demonstrating it.
- Stakes inflation: inflating everything to world-historical significance.
- Pedagogical voice: "Let's break this down", "Let's unpack this", "Let's explore".
- Vague attributions: "Experts argue", "Industry reports suggest" without naming sources.
- Invented concept labels: compound labels like "supervision paradox", "acceleration trap" used as if established terms.
Formatting
- Em-dash addiction: overuse of em dashes for dramatic pauses and pivots. (Use commas, parentheses, or periods instead.)
- Bold-first bullets: every list item starting with a bolded keyword.
- Unicode decoration: smart quotes, unicode arrows where straight
quotes and
->/=>would do.
Composition
- Fractal summaries: summarizing at every level (subsection, section, document).
- Dead metaphor: beating one metaphor across the entire piece.
- Historical analogy stacking: rapid-fire listing of companies or tech revolutions for false authority.
- One-point dilution: restating a single argument 10 ways across thousands of words.
- Signposted conclusion: "In conclusion", "To sum up", "In summary".
- "Despite its challenges...": acknowledging problems only to immediately dismiss them.
Process
- Read the text carefully.
- Flag each trope instance with the specific trope name and the offending passage.
- Provide a rewritten version of each flagged passage.
- If reviewing a full document, provide a clean rewritten version at the end.
Rules
- One instance of a trope can be fine. Flag when multiple tropes cluster or one repeats.
- Preserve the author's meaning and voice. Fix the slop, not the ideas.
- Prefer concrete, specific language over vague abstractions.
- Varied sentence length and structure is good. Imperfection is good.