Quietly feeling unimpactful: How to kill common AI darlings in your writing 

Isn’t it sad when bad things happen to good vocabulary? Chatbots’ syntactic slop and diction drivel — not to mention general overuse in corporate copy, AI-generated or otherwise — have resulted in some perfectly decent words losing their oomph, and sometimes they’re hard to avoid. 

The idea for this piece began when we asked people on LinkedIn which workplace words and phrases they’ve grown weary of lately. 

The replies offered a snapshot of the language that keeps turning up in workplace writing today. They covered everything from AI’s big feelings to the vague “impact” every campaign seems to make. The common thread that emerged included an overall lack of specificity and prevision.  

But many of those tired terms are hard to avoid. When you’re cranking out copy, they tend to find their way in, and it often takes a restructure and more questions to cut them completely. Fortunately, we’ve got some tips for you. 

We received a heap of great answers, so there’s more territory to be explored here. But for now, we’ll start with the rankling offenders that tend to read as AI “tells.” Take a look and consider the alternatives next time you’re tempted to lean on these words. 

Words and phrases to consider cutting 

“Quiet” and “quietly,” for example. A couple of people noted the sticky prevalence of “quiet/ly,” which AI loves to insert, often without a clear rationale or justification, into narratives of every kind. A brand may “quietly” rise to cultural prominence, one may be described as having “quiet confidence,” or a category of consumers may be described as “quietly” declining to participate in some aspect of the market. And really, these are all reasonable ways to describe a person or trend, but, like many bot-isms, this word choice is subjective and imprecise enough to be broadly applicable and “good enough” to fit many contexts without adding substance. 

In most cases, you can just quietly (or loudly, if you prefer) strip quietly out. Odds are, it’s not adding much (aside from the sense that you didn’t edit your robots), and if it needs to be replaced, demonstrate the same point through more objective evidence instead. Was it really a “quiet” launch, or did the brand intentionally start with more exclusive targeting?  

Another frequent offender in the same vein is “feel” or “feels.” Bots love to claim that work “feels transformative,” among a host of other vague applications. Feels to whom? When your chatbot overuses this word, it’s offloading the need for evidence-based claims onto a mysterious and hypothetical feeler of feelings. Who needs proof when we can operate on vibes? It’s practically passive voice without the passive voice. Lose it, and in doing so you’ll probably have to rework and refocus your sentences with clear actors, actions, and cause-and-effect logic. If you need to include feelings, who had that reaction, and what did they say or do? Attribute and describe responses that readers can observe. 

Speaking of oomph, impact and impactful have lost their impact — though, I’d be curious to find a time when these words were ever used precisely because it inherently “tells” rather than “shows.” If a campaign increased donations, changed a policy or reached a defined audience, just give readers that result and let it speak for itself.  

By now we all know that when they aren’t supplied with enough information (and sometimes when they are), chatbots tend to rely too much on negative parallelism, forced parallels, or contrasting negation, typically using structural phrasing such as “It’s not just X; it’s also Y.”  

These phrases are fine to use… if they’re merited. The trouble is that, in most cases, at least one of the two things (X or Y) doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. “It’s not just software. It’s a revolution.” Is it really, and what does that mean at a practical level?  

Or — hear me out — you could say what something is instead of wasting word count on what it isn’t.  

My favorite trick for getting around this is also my favorite for pitching great ideas: high-concept thinking. High concept, an idea borrowed from Hollywood, compresses an idea into a clear premise built from familiar pieces and an unexpected twist, often through a “What if X?” or “X meets Y” or “X but with Y” structure. “What if junior employees led a Town Hall for once?” Phrasing such as “it’s a candy bar ad in the style of a mockumentary comedy” or “it’s a conference meets a music festival” gives a reader a quick picture of the idea and its distinction, and it forces you to explain exactly what you’re offering or what you’ve created and what makes it different from competitors. 

If you can’t explain why two ideas presented in parallel structure are actually logical parallels, nix the “not,” and try describing your work and ideas using “X but with Y,” “X meets Y,” or “What if X?” for more narrative clarity instead. It’s a fun team brainstorm exercise, too. 

And finally, I mentioned “revolution.” There’s a word that comes with an enormous amount of cultural baggage, and it’s worth unpacking exactly what that means to justify its usage. Will there be guillotines? Will it really overturn anything? “Innovation” falls into the same category; if we claim that something is an innovation, we need to explain what’s really new that hasn’t been done before.  

If you choose words with such lofty claims, make sure they earn their keep. If they can’t, ask yourself more specific questions about what makes you, your pitch, your organization, or your team’s work distinctive. That’s just good writing and drafting advice in general. 

We’ll assemble more advice like this in the future, so let us know if you’re tired of any particular terms, AI generated or otherwise, and looking for alternatives. And if you’re looking for more advice for better wordsmithing, register for Ragan’s Writing & Content Strategy Virtual Conference, Dec. 3, 2027.