Why does ChatGPT sound like ChatGPT?

It pads: an opener that says nothing, three adjectives where one would do, a hedge before every claim and a summary of what it just said. Remove those and most drafts read like a person wrote them.

Can I just prompt it to sound human?

Prompts help, but the habits come back and you still reread every draft. De-slop reads the result sentence by sentence and cuts only what is padding.

Will it pass an AI detector?

That is not the goal, and nothing is added to trick one. The result is written for the person who reads it.

How to make ChatGPT sound more human

Fix the draft, not the prompt

You can spend an hour on prompts, or paste what ChatGPT wrote and fix the draft. To make ChatGPT sound more human, De-slop cuts the tells readers notice first (the warm-up line, the tidy recap, the “not just X, it’s Y”) and can match a sample of your own writing.

De-slop it

6 free pages a month. No card.

Made for

LinkedIn posts and newsletters drafted with ChatGPT
Cover letters and emails that read like a template
Essays and reports you want in your own voice

Before and after

Example: 71 → 25 words · every fact kept

Original

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve embarked on an exciting new chapter in my professional journey.Slop: hype After 4 years at Northwind, I’m joining Fabrikam as Head of Design on 2 June. This isn’t just a new role, it’s an opportunity to shape the future of design.Slop: set-piece rhetoric I’m deeply grateful to the incredible Northwind team that made the last 4 years so rewarding.Slop: inflated wording Here’s to new beginnings and the endless possibilities ahead!Slop: hype

Result

After 4 years at Northwind, I’m joining Fabrikam as Head of Design on 2 June.

Thank you to the Northwind team for those 4 years.

Kept: 4 years
Kept: Northwind
Kept: Fabrikam
Kept: Head of Design
Kept: 2 June

How De-slop works

Step 01
Every sentence is read
Each one is marked as content or padding, with the kind of padding: filler, inflated wording, hedging, set-piece rhetoric, recap or hype.
Step 02
Empty sentences go first
A sentence that carries nothing is cut without a rewrite, as long as the passage still reads as whole text.
Step 03
The rest is rewritten
Passages with padding left are rewritten one at a time, with the whole document as context, so details inside the padding stay.
Step 04
Facts are checked
Numbers are compared in code; lost, changed or added facts are caught. A passage that cannot pass keeps its words.

Options

Your voice: Paste a few paragraphs you wrote. The rewrite matches their rhythm and word choice, never their content.
Write in: Keep the language, or translate while cleaning up.

From code, terminal or agent

# REST API
curl https://readable.md/api/v1/transform \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $READABLE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "tool": "deslop", "text": "…", "voice": "A few paragraphs of your own writing…" }'

# Command line
readable deslop draft.md --voice my-post.md > clean.md

# MCP tool: deslop

API, MCP and CLI docs

Questions

Why does ChatGPT sound like ChatGPT?: It pads: an opener that says nothing, three adjectives where one would do, a hedge before every claim and a summary of what it just said. Remove those and most drafts read like a person wrote them.
Can I just prompt it to sound human?: Prompts help, but the habits come back and you still reread every draft. De-slop reads the result sentence by sentence and cuts only what is padding.
Will it pass an AI detector?: That is not the goal, and nothing is added to trick one. The result is written for the person who reads it.