Close reading is the oldest technique in any English classroom: slow down, look at how a text says what it says, and mark what you notice. It turns out to be the most useful skill a reader has when a piece of writing feels oddly smooth and oddly empty at the same time. Text produced by language models tends to share a set of habits, and those habits are visible on the page if you know where to put the highlighter. This page describes those habits, gives each one a mark, and then says clearly what a page full of marks does and does not mean.
Why a highlighter works better than a hunch
A hunch that something "sounds generated" is impossible to discuss. A page with twelve marked phrases is easy to discuss: you can point at each one, ask whether a human writer would plausibly choose it, and compare it with the writer's other work. Marking turns an impression into evidence you can look at together. It also protects the writer, because most of the habits below are ordinary features of cautious, inexperienced or formulaic human prose, and a marked page makes that visible too. The same selectivity rules from our summary of the highlighting research apply here: mark little, and mark with a purpose.
Five patterns worth marking
| Pattern | What it looks like | Mark it with |
|---|---|---|
| Hedging without a reason | "It is important to note", "can potentially", "may help to some extent", qualifiers that protect a claim nobody challenged | A short yellow stroke on the qualifier only |
| Uniform cadence | Paragraph after paragraph of three or four sentences of similar length, each opening with a topic sentence and closing with a summary line | A tick in the margin beside each paragraph that follows the template |
| Stock transitions | "Furthermore", "Moreover", "In today's fast-paced world", "In conclusion" arriving on schedule rather than when the argument turns | A circle around the transition word |
| Generic examples | Examples that could appear in any essay on the topic: "for instance, a student might use technology to learn" | An underline and a note: which student? |
| Lists of three | Adjectives, reasons and benefits that always arrive in threes, with the third item vaguer than the first two | A bracket around the triple |
Use the smallest mark that does the job. The aim is a page where each kind of mark stays readable, which is the same principle as the three-colour limit in our colour code for study. If you prefer colour to shapes, give one colour to hedging and transitions, a second to cadence, and a third to generic examples, and stop there.
Reading the marks once you are done
Step back and look at the page as a whole. Three things matter more than the number of marks. First, distribution: human writing is uneven, so marks cluster where the writer was tired or unsure and thin out where they cared. A page marked evenly from top to bottom is more interesting than a page with one dense patch. Second, specificity: count the sentences that could only have been written by someone who read this particular source, attended this particular class or visited this particular place. Specific detail is the strongest sign of a person behind the words, and its absence is worth noting. Third, voice: compare the page with something the same writer produced in class or by hand. A sudden change in cadence and vocabulary is a conversation starter; the same cadence in both is reassuring.
What the marks cannot tell you
Every habit on the list has an innocent explanation. Writers learning English as an additional language often lean on stock transitions because textbooks teach them. Students taught the five-paragraph essay produce uniform cadence on purpose. Nervous writers hedge. Technical and legal prose hedges by design. And a writer who uses a model to draft and then rewrites heavily may leave none of these marks at all. A marked page is therefore never proof of anything. It is a record of what you noticed, which you can show the writer and discuss.
A fair rule
Never act on the marks alone. Use them to open a conversation about the work, and let the writer's drafts, notes and account of their process carry the weight. Our guide to authorship review with highlights shows how to run that conversation.
Doing it on screen
On paper, print the text with wide margins and use a pen. On screen, open the text as a PDF and use the viewer's highlight and note tools, which save the marks in the file (see highlighting in a PDF). For a web page, the bookmarklet marks passages while you read, and a highlight link lets you send a colleague straight to a sentence you want a second opinion on without forwarding the whole document.
Using the method on your own writing
The method is at least as useful turned inward. Mark your own draft for the five habits before you hand it in or publish it. Every hedge you cannot justify, every transition that arrives on schedule and every example that could belong to anyone is a sentence you can make more specific. Writers who do this find their prose gets shorter and more concrete, which is the best defence against being mistaken for a machine and a good habit regardless.
Close reading is one of several methods in the section on highlighting to learn. For turning your marks into something you can use later, see how to take notes from highlights, and for running the method with a class, the teacher activities adapt directly.
Common questions
Can you tell if text is AI written by reading it closely?
Close reading can show habits that often appear in machine-written text, such as unexplained hedging, uniform paragraph cadence and stock transitions. It cannot prove who wrote a text, because people write with the same habits. Treat the marks as questions to discuss.
What should I highlight when reviewing writing for AI patterns?
Unexplained qualifiers, template paragraphs, transitions that arrive on schedule, generic examples and reflexive lists of three. Use a different small mark for each so the patterns stay separate.
Is uniform sentence length a sign of AI writing?
It is one habit among several and is common in formulaic human writing too. It is worth marking only alongside a lack of specific detail and a change from the writer's usual voice.
Should teachers use close reading instead of detection software?
Close reading is a way to look at a text carefully and to prepare questions for the writer. Whatever other tools a school uses, decisions should rest on a conversation and on the writer's process evidence, not on any single signal.
Does this work for languages other than English?
The idea transfers: mark hedges, template structure and stock connectives in any language. The specific phrases differ, so build your own list from texts you know were written by people.
Sources
- Adler, M. J. and Van Doren, C. (1972). How to Read a Book, revised edition. Simon and Schuster (on marking a text as active reading).
- Brummett, B. (2019). Techniques of Close Reading, 2nd edition. SAGE Publications.
- Dunlosky, J. et al. (2013). Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1).