Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

Do you really want to write “quietly”? (It’s an AI favorite)Release Date: February 27, 2026We all have “pet” words or phrases that slide into our prose like a favorite shoe that’s shaped to our foot and supports our gait—literary techniques that feel like our voice on the page.Some writers come across more casual, using sentence fragments or words like “ain’t” and “c’mon!” Others turn to ellipses for hesitation and pop a statement (or question) in parentheses for humor.Guess who’s been paying attention to how we express ourselves?Yeah, LLMs slurped up our online writing and got a taste for the way we write. Their favorite words and phrases draw from our favorite words and phrases, and now they’re repeating them ad nauseam, shoving them into everyone’s drafts so people leaning on AI for their writing start to sound suspiciously similar.What’s especially frustrating is that these are perfectly good writing techniques, and now that I see them spilling into my inbox, I hesitate using them.In the hands of skilled