Formatting

Compulsive overuse of em dashes for dramatic pauses, parenthetical asides and pivot points. A human writer might use 2-3 per piece (and naturally); AI will use 20+.

“The problem -- and this is the part nobody talks about -- is systemic.”

Every bullet point or list item starts with a bolded phrase or sentence. Extremely common in Claude and ChatGPT markdown output. Almost nobody formats lists this way when writing by hand. It's a telltale sign of AI-generated documentation and blog posts AND README files (especially with emojis).

“Every single bullet point begins with a bold keyword.”

Use of unicode arrows (->), smart/curly quotes, and other special characters that can't be easily typed on a standard keyboard. Real writers typing in a text editor produce straight quotes and -> or =>. Claude in particular loves the -> arrow.

“Input → Processing → Output”