The more AI is being used to generate text, the more we are subjected to having to read it. Writing this in the middle of 2026, over the past few months, I have become wary of that.

Now, I will readily admit that I’ve used LLMs to generate texts, especially in 2025, when it wasn’t so common yet. This helped me create company blog posts or marketing copy (e.g., for LinkedIn), but something always felt off, and I’d have to step in and fix the language. The more I became aware of the AI language tropes, the more I had to change.

These days, I am back to writing myself. It just feels more natural (well, duh!). I usually don’t have problems with coming up with ideas anyway. There’s no blank-page anxiety. The only thing missing was time — I happily used LLMs to help me finish a post (e.g., dictating it, and applying finishing touches using Claude). But it’s just a completely different way of thinking that gets enabled when you actively write yourself — generating vs. reading/changing what is already there. I’d like to preserve that. That’s not an area where time can be saved.

I have been thinking about what it is that separates clear writing from the AI-generated garbage that I have been reading lately. I have a few ideas — rather, guidelines —, and I want to share them here, in the hope that they are useful to someone.

Structure

Reader attention is becoming a scarce resource. We know people will skim texts by headline or paragraph. Structure helps your audience understand the text even when just glancing at it. It prevents confusion and leads to better recall.

You don’t have to announce the structure, but it sometimes helps, especially in academic contexts (“This paper is structured as follows: …”). I found it useful to tell people what you are going to say in a particular piece, and then say it. Or do a cold open, and then explain why.

Overall Structure

Big headlines should serve as anchors, guiding the reader from one section to the next. Use subheadings only when the text becomes too long or complex to be easily understood (e.g., technical reports).

Humans love a good story. A good overall structure is based on narrative arcs that resonate with people. It’s worth knowing a few typical story trajectories (often based on three pillars) so you can conform your writing to one of them. You do not have to follow this approach exactly, but I’ve always found it helpful to have a very coarse structure I can adhere to.

Here is one such arc:

  • Context/outline: What is the problem or question? Why does it matter?
  • Findings: What did you find? What is the answer to the question?
  • Implications/conclusion: What does it mean? What should the reader do with this information?

Another common arc is the Turning Point:

  • State before: What was was like?
  • Turning point: What changed? How did it change? Why did it change?
  • State after: What improved (or worsened)?

Here’s another one, Reflection:

  • Show a scene: Describe a scenario, a situation, or a problem.
  • Reflection: What does it mean? What is the takeaway?
  • Broader meaning: How does this relate to the world, or to the reader’s life?

Parallel stories or examples can work really well:

  • Identify a topic: what is the subject of the story?
  • Give three or four examples: what are the different ways this topic manifests? Could be a personal anecdote, an online resource, …
  • Summarize: what is the takeaway from these examples?

Paragraph- and Sentence-Level Structure

Readers get confused when you present them with too many ideas at once. There should be one topic per paragraph and one idea per sentence. To quote Strunk & White’s Elements of Style (from 1918!):

Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.

If the subject on which you are writing is of slight extent, or if you intend to treat it very briefly, there may be no need of subdividing it into topics. Thus a brief description, a brief summary of a literary work, a brief account of a single incident, a narrative merely outlining an action, the setting forth of a single idea, any one of these is best written in a single paragraph.

Most importantly:

After the paragraph has been written, it should be examined to see whether subdivision will not improve it.

Once you’ve written out paragraphs, check that they flow from one to the next. The first sentence of each should give the reader an idea of what it is about, and it should not be dependent on what came before. Imagine you have to skim a document and you can ever only read the first sentence of each paragraph. You should still understand the point.

Again, Strunk & White:

Ordinarily, however, a subject requires subdivision into topics, each of which should be made the subject of a paragraph. The object of treating each topic in a paragraph by itself is, of course, to aid the reader. The beginning of each paragraph is a signal to him that a new step in the development of the subject has been reached.

In other words, each sentence should make one point, and it should be clear what that point is. At sentence-level, that means you should break packed sentences apart. A colon, a semicolon, or an em-dash (yes, you can still use them! I have used them since 2015!) can hold two thoughts together. When should you use which? Read this article for some guidelines.

Clarity

Here is a loose collection of guidelines related to clarity. They are not hard rules, but they are worth keeping in mind when writing:

  • State the point plainly. Let a finding stand on its own. Don’t announce that it matters with a label. Don’t signpost and say, “The headline result is that…” or “The central finding is that…”. In many cases, it’s fine to just say it.

  • No need to underline importance. Sometimes, using words like “notably”, “importantly”, “it’s worth noting that” is fine. Especially in academic writing, this kind of “glue” is necessary to connect ideas and separate details from the key points. Generally, though, if something is important, the sentence already shows it. Your reader can understand that.

  • Avoid overconfidence. When in doubt, it is better to hedge your bets and not to overstate. Resist using words like “clearly”, “obviously”, “undoubtedly”, “it is certain that”. If you cannot support it, don’t say it. An honest “maybe” is better than confidently being wrong. If you must, use “likely”, “it seems”, “may”, “could”, “we assume”, “apparently” for anything you truly cannot back up. Be careful to not overuse those words either.

  • Make each point once. You can refer to it later (“As discussed in Section 2.1…” for technical reports), but don’t restate it as if it wasn’t said before. That will confuse readers. It also helps keep the text shorter.

  • Think about what the reader needs to know — not what you want to say. I’m sure you have plenty of things to write about, but the reader primarily wants what you found and what it means, not necessarily the process you used to find it.

Word Choices

English has so many words. I’m sure that your readers, however, will appreciate simple writing. Avoid using a thesaurus to find a more “elevated” word.

Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of writers — especially native speakers — who have a broad vocabulary and are not afraid to use it. But if you are writing for a general audience, simple words are often better.

Examples:

  • “has” / “shows” before “exhibits”, “reveals”, “demonstrates”
  • “is” before “serves as”, “represents”, “sits at”
  • “use” before “utilize”, “leverage”
  • “about” / “around” before “approximately”
  • “similar to” before “in line with”
  • “so” or “because” before “thereby” or “in order to”
  • “more” or “most” before “heightened”, “elevated”, “the sharpest”

Paul Graham has an excellent blog post about writing simply. I encourage you to read it. I admit I was inspired a lot by it when writing this post, although it’s been some years since I’ve read it.

Simplicity is not always the end-goal. In particular, in academic writing, there are exceptions. When authoring papers, I’d lean towards the lingo that is more common in the field. As long as nobody’s delving, you’re good. That being said, I tend to enjoy the more clearly written papers.

Avoid the Passive

For work you did, say who did it and that it is done. Especially in academic writing, the passive voice is still overused (“it was determined that…”). I’m not sure why, but it seems to be a tradition that has been carried over for way too long.

First person and past tense read as more honest and direct. For example, it’s fine to say “We measured…”, “we observed…”, “our earlier report showed…”. There’s no reason to hide behind the passive.

Conclusion

I presented a few guidelines here that I try to follow when writing. They are not set in stone, and this post is definitely not a perfect example in terms of following all of them. However, I hope they are useful to my readers. If you have any other guidelines that you typically follow, let me know. I’d be happy to hear them.