How to De-Slop AI-Generated Content in 7 Edits

You can de-slop almost any AI draft with seven edits: cut the throat-clearing, ban the tells, force contractions, swap abstractions for specifics, vary the sentence rhythm, delete the false contrasts, and read it aloud. Each one targets a specific reason AI writing reads like AI writing. Here they are, then how to stop making them by hand.

The seven edits

1. Cut the throat-clearing. Delete the first sentence if the second one works without it. AI loves a warm-up nobody needs.
2. Ban the tells. Strike "delve," "leverage," "seamless," "robust," "elevate." If your best writer wouldn’t say it aloud, it goes.
3. Force contractions. "Do not" reads like a legal notice. Contractions are how people actually talk.
4. Swap abstractions for specifics. "Improves performance" becomes the number, the channel, or the example. Specifics are the opposite of slop.
5. Vary the rhythm. AI drafts in one sentence length. Break the metronome: a short sentence after two long ones wakes the reader up.
6. Delete the false contrasts. "It’s not just X, it’s Y" is a machine cadence. Say the thing directly and cut the setup.
7. Read it aloud. Anywhere you stumble, a reader will too. Your ear catches what your eye skims.

Automate the checks

Seven manual edits per draft is a tax, and taxes get skipped under deadline. The durable fix is to run these as a check on every draft automatically, which is what the de-slopped content system does: the ban list, the contraction rule, and your learned patterns enforced before anything ships. The specific words worth banning are a good starting list, and Content & Copy runs the whole pass so scale never means slop, the job a content designer does on their best day, on every draft.