You read the draft twice and something is off, but you cannot point at a line. Each sentence passes alone, and the page still sounds like nobody wrote it.
To make AI writing sound human, edit it in two passes. First strip the patterns that make copy read as machine made, like long dashes and praise nobody asked for. Then rewrite so the answer comes first, in plain words.
We went through this ourselves. We noticed our drafts read as obviously machine made, with long dashes, formulaic patterns and promotional language. So we built an edit routine, and it is short enough to run on your own service pages and customer emails this week.
Why the copy feels off before you can say why
In our view, a page can be accurate and polite and still read as unattended, because the same shapes keep showing up: praise nobody asked for, hedges, lists that always run to three, a long dash in the middle of a thought.
The obvious fix is a better prompt. In our view that is the wrong place to look.
Our strip pass runs in two steps: a check against about 30 known patterns, then one blunt question: what makes this obviously machine made? You need the handful that show up most, plus the discipline to answer that question honestly.
We think this matters more for owners than for writers. An owner's copy is a promise to a stranger at a bad moment, a locked door or a leaking pipe, and a stranger who senses a template may stop trusting the rest of the page.
Pass one: strip the patterns
Pass one is a pattern scan. Read the draft against a list of known machine habits and delete each one you find. Pass one aims for a draft with nothing left a reader would recognize as machine made. After the scan, ask what makes it obviously machine made and fix what the question names.
These are the top offenders we always catch: long dashes, bold keyword spam, filler phrases that end in -ing, significance inflation, a fancier verb where a plain "is" would do, and the rule of three.
Here is what that looks like on a service page and in a customer email. The left column is typical machine style. The right column is the same job done in plain words.
Before: sounds like a machine
- Our dedicated team is passionate about delivering exceptional, high-quality service to our customers.
- We offer fast, reliable, and friendly lockout help, and we are always here for you.
- Thanks so much for reaching out. I hope this email finds you well. It might be worth considering a few options.
After: sounds like a person
- We fix and replace locks.
- Call and tell us what happened. We will say what the job needs before we start.
- You asked about the second option. It fits your door. Here is how it works.
Notice what the rewrites do not do. They do not add personality or jokes. They remove the padding and let the sentence say the thing. The email rewrite also drops the greeting that praises the question, because a customer who asked about a lock wants the answer.
Pass two: put the answer first
Pass two puts the answer in the first line. A service page answers what the visitor typed into search. A customer email answers what the customer asked. Whatever comes first should be that answer, stated plainly enough that someone could quote it.
Our writing rules for this are strict. No hedging, such as "it might be worth considering." No throat clearing, such as an opener that praises the question. No filler. Never say "it depends" without saying, in the same breath, what it depends on. And if you lack the information to decide, say exactly what is missing instead of going vague.
The answer-first edit
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Find the question the reader brought
For a page, it is the search that landed them there. For an email, it is the sentence they sent you.
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Move the answer to line one
Cut the greeting and the warm up above it. They can follow the answer if they earn a place.
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Replace vague conditions with real ones
If the honest answer depends on something, name the thing in the same sentence.
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Say what is missing
When you cannot decide without one more fact, ask for that fact by name.
Length is not the fix either. Why a longer service page does not rank better covers the ranking side. Put the answer first and the page can stay short.
Which rules are absolute and which are judgment
The long dash ban is absolute. Replace each with a comma, a period, a colon or a pipe. Everything else on the list is judgment, because a good writer sometimes uses a list of three or a bold word, and the edit is about whether it earns its place.
That split saves time. An absolute rule can be checked in seconds by search, so you never argue with yourself about it. Judgment calls need a reader. Read the line aloud and ask whether you would say it to the customer standing at the counter. If you would not, rewrite it.
Here is the short version, as a starting point you can change. This is our opinion, not a law of writing: when in doubt, cut.
The short answer
- Pass one removes the machine patterns. Pass two puts the answer first.
- Long dashes are an absolute ban. Use commas, periods, colons or pipes instead.
- Bold words, lists of three and -ing phrases are judgment calls. Keep them only when they earn their place.
One more standard, and it is ours: finished copy must be ready to use as is. Not a template you can customize. If the page needs rework before it goes live, the edit is not done.
Run the edit on your own copy this week
Pick one service page and a few recent customer emails, then run both passes in order. Strip the patterns first, search the page for long dashes, and then rewrite the opening so it answers the question the reader came with. Stop when the first line of every section answers its heading.
Do it on paper if that helps. Read the first sentence of each section and ask if it answers the heading above it. If a section opens with scene setting, move the answer up and let the scene follow. Then read the whole page once more as a stranger would, and cut anything that sounds like praise for yourself.
If you want a second pair of hands on the edit, this is the kind of content work we do.
One last habit before anything goes live. Run a pre-mortem on the page and ask what a skeptical reader would say first. If your first sentence already answers that, the second pass did its job.
This post was drafted with AI tools from our own project records, anonymized, and checked by us before it published. Read our editorial standards.
