Summary
(To cut a long story short … )
- AI-written web copy is easy to spot, especially as it’s usually bland or brand-less.
- For UK audiences, key telltale signs include US spelling, em dashes and the Oxford comma.
- A human copywriter colours copy with tone, nuance and creativity originality that AI can’t replicate (for now).
Want to check at a glance if copy is written with AI?
When discussing a web project with a prospective client, I can spot right away if their existing web content has been written using an AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Claude.
Some clients will readily admit to it; they’ve had a go themselves to save paying a freelance copywriter and realised that the results aren’t quite right. (I’ve worked recently with two new clients who weren’t happy with their web copy which had ChatGPT written all over it.)
Other clients are taken aback. They’ve paid a freelance copywriter a fee that reflects their expertise – without being told that AI would be used instead.
Most blogs about telling the difference between copy written by a human copywriter and copy written by an AI tool will talk about copy style and tone, and how the copy is often bland or reads strangely. One client of mine decided to use ChatGPT to revise a brand story that I’d spent ages crafting. She came up with three versions: they all lacked style and flow and made no sense whatsoever.
Of course, you can always use a checker to detect AI-content, such as GPTZero, ZeroGPT or Grammarly, but there are three simple ways that instantly tell you if AI has been been used to write copy (for a British market).
ChatGPT uses US spelling
Note that my blog headline specifies UK English copy. That’s because ChatGPT defaults to the language on which it was largely trained: US English.
Yes, you can prompt AI with ‘Use en-GB’ or ‘Please only use British English spelling and grammar’, but don’t rely on the results to be 100% correct.
Here’s why: when a Large Language Model (LLM), such as ChatGPT, comes up with a word suggestion, it works on probability based on training data and will therefore select the highest probability word. For instance, if ‘theater’ appears more frequently than ‘theatre’, ChatGPT will use ‘theater’.
ChatGPT uses the em dash
LLMs use the em dash in punctuation—which is typical of US English grammar. In Britain, we use the en dash – can you see the difference in this sentence???
The em dash is longer than the en dash and there are no spaces either side. It’s called the em dash because it’s the width of a Roman capital M. The en dash is the width of an N, which is the average width of a typeset character – known as an en rule.
Em and en dashes replace commas, colons or parentheses; often to link clauses or highlight part of a sentence.
Many British publishers use an en rule with space either side as a parenthetical dash, while Oxford and most US publishers use an em rule. (When I was looking into the history of this and checked my very old second edition copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, printed by the Oxford University Press, I was surprised to see the em dash used throughout – now I know why.)
En dashes shouldn’t be used as lazy punctuation or peppered throughout copy. As The Sunday Times Style Guide declares: ‘One – or – two may be helpful; more will annoy – and confuse.’
Speaking of the Oxford University Press …
ChatGPT uses the Oxford comma
This is another dead giveaway.
The Oxford comma is also known as the serial comma because it’s used to separate words before the last ‘and’ or ‘or’ in a list of three or more items. It’s more commonly known as the ‘Oxford comma’ as it is part of the Oxford University Press house style; academic publishers prefer using it as it reduces ambiguity. (Doesn’t ‘serial comma’ sound rather cold-blooded?!)
Take this as an example of the difference:
A US freelance copywriter loves writing copy for websites, radio commercials, and brochures.
A UK freelance copywriter loves writing copy for websites, radio commercials and brochures.
A well-known example of where the Oxford comma rule in UK English needs breaking is from Lynne Truss’ fantastic punctuation book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
‘Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.’
Is a human copywriter worth paying for?
Yes, an experienced human copywriter is worth their weight in gold because of the value they’ll add. Creating a tone of voice for a company or brand to help it stand out and stand up takes creativity, expertise and time. To compete in a crowded market, that tone of voice needs to be relevant, distinctive and desirable.
And you can’t achieve that with AI.
For now, that is …
Written by Caroline Gibson, London freelance copywriter who writes for both UK and US clients so knows where to stick an Oxford comma. Want to see more grammar tips? Check out Has Ignoring The Grammar Rules Become The Rule In Advertising? and It’s vs Its
E: caroline@carolinegibson.co.uk T: +44 (0) 7957 567766
