Tropes – AI Writing Pattern Directory

A new website, Tropes.fyi, offers a directory of recurring writing patterns that identify AI-generated text, along with tools like 'The Writing Whip' prompt and 'Deslopify' to help writers and editors avoid these tells. Creator ossama.is launched the resource to combat what he calls 'AI slop' in online writing, providing a single file, tropes.md, that can be added to AI assistants' system prompts to prevent such patterns.

Instantly identify AI writing patterns by ossama.is https://ossama.is “Despite these challenges, the initiative continues to thrive.” "Despite its challenges..." “In conclusion, the future of AI depends on...” Signposted conclusion “It's not bold. It's backwards.” Negative parallelism “The problem -- and this is the part nobody talks about -- is systemic.” Em-dash addiction “He published this. Openly. In a book. As a priest.” Short punchy fragments A dynamic directory of the recurring tropes, tics and structural patterns that give away AI-generated text. For writers, editors, publishers, anyone who reads and anyone who cares. Word Choice 6 /directory?category=word-choice · Sentence Structure 9 /directory?category=sentence-structure · Paragraph Structure 2 /directory?category=paragraph-structure · Tone 14 /directory?category=tone · Formatting 5 /directory?category=formatting · Composition 13 /directory?category=composition The Writing Whip NewEvery trope in the directory is stated as an instruction, and it covers response behaviours as well as prose, so it governs how the model answers you too. Drop it in your skills directory and it loads before the model writes anything. The rage-fueled motivation https://ossama.is/writing/fatigue is on the blog. Lead with the answer, the solution or the change. Do not preface it, do not announce what you are about to do, do not rephrase the question or the prompt back at the reader. EVER. Reasoning leak: Do not narrate what you are doing, deciding, planning or about to do. Do the thing and produce the output. Compulsive counting: Do not state the number of items before listing them. Do not enumerate or count anything explicitly. ai;dr Just the prompt please. 3000 words of slop, distilled back to the 30-word prompt they actually typed. Save your attention, time and sanity ordered by value . AI Vetter Drop a link. We'll tell you if it's worth reading. 7 tropes identified across 4 categories Heavy use of negative parallelism, anaphora abuse One-point dilution: single argument restated 8 times Deslopify Paste text in. Get a diff-style breakdown of every phrase, sentence and structure that reads like AI, with suggested rewrites. 1The technology is extraordinary, the demos are 2dazzling, and the marketing is relentless. 3impressive, and the marketing is aggressive. 4Yet when you look at how people actually 5work — the real workflows, the real tools, the real daily grind 6their actual day-to-day — AI sits mostly on the 7sidelines. Can't sell the poison without selling the cure eh? tropes.md A single file you can drop into any AI assistant's system prompt so it avoids these patterns. Copy or download. AI Writing Tropes to Avoid Add this file to your AI assistant's system prompt or context to help it avoid common AI writing patterns. Source: tropes.fyi --- Sentence Structure Negative parallelism El Classico, the "It's not X -- it's Y" pattern. The single most commonly identified AI writing tell. Man I f cking hate it. The model uses this to create false profundity by framing everything as a surprise. Once can be effective; TEN in a blog post is a genuine insult to the reader. Avoid patterns like: - "It's not bold. It's backwards." - "The question isn't whether to optimize. The question is when to stop." - "The real issue isn't technical. The real issue is organizational." Why this exists Man I am so sick of AI slop in writing. I don't think you quite understand how prevalent it is. It is disrespectful to expect ME to read something YOU could not even be bothered to write or likely even read . The lingering human connection that remained on the internet is now being diluted even further. Many of the Hacker News posts I click on especially sorting by new are completely AI generated let me not even start on Reddit posts or Twitter threads which I don't use . This includes several that reach the front page on a daily basis. It's shameless. Unfortunately, many of you educated readers are completely oblivious. AI-generated text is getting harder to spot but the models still have very obvious tells. Do not waste your time reading words that nobody wrote. Something void of character, flare, passion and risk. These tools will help you both generously identify AI writing and save you from having to read it. To combat this and because I'm petty I built this directory that names and shames the patterns. Both to educate those are not AI-literate and to call it out Each trope is documented with examples so you know exactly what to look for - not every emdash is AI I carefully selected this one and, because I'm petty, how to call it out “You're a hypocrite I'm sure you use AI for writing code ” — AI generated code is fine, it's one computer LLM talking to another compiler . How else do you think AI is so good at writing code? They're speaking the same language But prose? That's from human to human, it's sacred and meant for other people. Using AI for that is deceitful. Further reading