✂️ Stop AI Writing Like AI: The Plain-English Fix

You’ve got a draft in front of you. Claude wrote it, the facts are right, and something about it is off. It reads like a leaflet somebody left on a windscreen.

Your customers can smell it now. They can’t usually say why, but they stop reading properly, because the thing in front of them reads like nobody meant it.

This guide fixes the text you’re looking at. Teaching Claude to sound like you specifically, permanently, is the other job: Teach AI To Write Like You.

The four tells, so you can spot them in two seconds

1. The greatest-hits vocabulary. Seamless. Robust. Comprehensive. Streamline. Landscape, when nobody’s outdoors. Navigate, when nobody’s driving. The test is whether you’d say it across a table. Nobody has ever described a robust scone.

2. Everything arrives in threes. “Faster, simpler and more reliable.” It’s a rhythm borrowed from speechwriting, and in an email about a cake sale it sounds unhinged. Count them once and you’ll never stop noticing. Sorry about that.

3. The essay reflex. You asked whether Thursday works. You got four paragraphs with headings, a balanced consideration of the options and a conclusion beginning “Ultimately”. Length wildly out of proportion to the question is the giveaway.

4. The butler. “I hope this email finds you well.” “Please don’t hesitate to reach out should you require further assistance.” The tells cluster at the top and the bottom, which is why the middle of AI text often reads perfectly fine and the bookends give the game away.

The fix, in one prompt

Nick this one, then paste your draft:

You're rescuing a piece of writing that came out sounding like AI wrote it. I need it to sound like a person meant it. Rewrite it to these rules:

1. Cut stock words. Anything I wouldn't say across a table goes: seamless, robust, streamline, leverage, delve, that whole family.
2. Break up lists of three. Usually the sentence wanted to make one plain claim and the other two were upholstery, so keep the one that matters.
3. Match the length to the job. If the point fits in two sentences, that's the answer. No headings, no introduction restating the question, no summing up.
4. Cut the formal bookends. No "I hope this finds you well", no "don't hesitate to reach out". Open with the point, end simply.
5. Keep every fact, figure, date, price and name exactly as it is. If you're unsure whether something is a fact or my opinion, ask, don't guess.
6. Plain words over posh: use not utilise, help not facilitate, buy not purchase.
7. Keep the intent. A firm chase stays firm, an apology stays an apology.

Give me the final version only, ready to paste. No options, no commentary, no explanation of what you changed unless I ask.

Here's the draft: [PASTE]

Ask me up to three questions before you start. Who it's going to and how blunt I'm allowed to be would be my guesses.

Why the last line earns its place: “Is this to a client who owes you money, or a customer you’ve never met?” is the question that decides everything, and it’s the one nobody thinks to answer upfront. Three questions costs you fifteen seconds and saves you the second attempt.

The version you’ll actually use most

When you’re mid-conversation and the robot voice creeps back in, don’t paste anything. Just type this.

The nine-second version:

Again, but how you'd say it to a friend across a table. Half the length, none of the polish, same facts.

It works because Claude already knows what it just wrote. You’re not teaching it style, you’re giving it permission to relax, and the second attempt is very often the message you’d have written yourself if you’d had the patience.

What it looks like

A bakery announcing new hours. First draft:

“Exciting news! We’re thrilled to announce that we’re enhancing our opening hours to serve you better, offering greater flexibility, convenience and choice. We can’t wait to welcome you!”

Through the prompt:

“We’re open until 6pm on weekdays now. Loads of you asked for time to grab a loaf after work, so there it is. Saturdays stay the same.”

Same facts. One reads like a leaflet nobody picks up, the other reads like the person who makes your bread.

Two honest limits

It can overshoot. For a landlord dispute, a formal complaint or anything with money attached, some starch is correct, so add “keep it professional, just make it human” and it will.

It can’t fix an empty draft. A natural-sounding version of nothing is still nothing, and only you can tell whether the thing says what you meant. Read every rewrite before it goes anywhere.

Tonight

Learn the nine-second version by heart. It fixes most robot voice without you having to name a single tell, and you’ll use it more than anything else on this page.

That’s one draft rescued. The Claude Kickstart stops the robot voice happening in the first place: your real voice taught properly, then pointed at five jobs you’d rather not do. £47, one weekend.