Three things to know before you edit
The most common mistake when de-slopping a draft is hunting single words like "leverage" or "delve." On their own, people use those words too, so swapping them changes nothing. AI-sounding text comes from thin patterns and immaculate formatting stacking up. Fix that, not the vocabulary. Three habits make the pass sharper.
- Judge by density, not by the word. One hedge ("this may help") is normal. Fix it only when the same empty pattern repeats across a paragraph
- Edit top-down. Go notation → wording → sentences → document, clearing the mechanical layer first. The order keeps you from second-guessing
- Good writing needs few edits. If a line already has a name, a number, and a judgment, leave it. The goal is higher information density, not more tinkering
Layer 1: Notation and formatting (mechanical)
Always start here, because it takes no judgment. Look for raw markdown left in prose ("bold", "### headings", "---", "link", backticks around ordinary words), assistant and tool residue ("Certainly! Here is a polished version:", "as mentioned above" with nothing above, "[source]" with no source), label colons stacked through the piece ("The result: faster onboarding."), Title Case On Ordinary Headings, and needless precision like spelling out acronyms every reader knows ("AWS (Amazon Web Services)") or "approximately 3,167 users." Round the number or drop the hedge. If the document follows a house style, that style wins.
Layer 2: Stock wording (put content back)
Watch for openers like "In today's fast-paced world" and closers like "In conclusion" that could sit on top of any text; empty significance words ("testament," "pivotal," "underscores the importance," "valuable insights") standing in for a fact; promotional gloss ("boasts," "seamless," "cutting-edge"); and hedging by default ("may," "might," "arguably") softening every line. Start from the subject, the problem, or the conclusion. Cut the appraisal and let the facts already in the draft speak. Where the draft has grounds, commit; where conditions matter, state them instead of weakening the sentence. Return inflated verbs to plain ones: "utilize" and "leverage" to "use," "facilitate" to "help," "serves as" to "is."
Layer 3: Sentence construction (shape and rhythm)
Two patterns fake depth: "not just X but Y" contrasts and tidy rule-of-three lists ("fast, flexible, and scalable") that gesture at completeness without saying anything. Keep a contrast or a list only when each part carries real content. Then check rhythm: sentences of uniform length and synonym cycling that calls one thing "the company," "the firm," "the organization." Vary sentence length to match the weight of the idea, and repeat a term when it is the right term. Match the register: no contractions at all reads stiff in a casual piece, and forced chattiness reads like a bad humanizer in a formal one.
Layer 4: Document shape (structure and specifics)
When bullets, headings, and bold are doing the work of prose in parts that should persuade or explain, turn them back into sentences. The same goes for numbered lists on content with no order, everything grouped into "three key points," and a "Key Takeaways" or "Summary / Risks / Next Steps" scaffold the reader never asked for. Keep structure only where it genuinely helps. Last, check for polished-but-empty: the formatting is perfect, yet there are no names, numbers, conditions, or scenes anywhere. Bring the concrete information forward, and end on a judgment, a next step, or a concrete fact — not a restated summary.