# Magic adverbs Part of [The AI Tells Index](https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells). A tell signals low effort. It does not identify an author. Skilled writers produce every shape listed here, some of them daily, and automated detectors misread those writers for it at rates measured above 60 percent on non-native English prose. Nothing in this index proves that a machine wrote anything. Read an entry as one piece of evidence to weigh against the false-positive notes printed beside it. ## Facts - Id: magic-adverbs - Category: Rhetorical and discourse (rhetorical) - Subcategory: unearned-drama - Also known as: quietly reshaping, silently transforming, subtly - Status: Active. Currently signals low-effort writing. - Severity: low - Evidence grade: community-observed (named by practitioners, no formal measurement exists) - Languages: en - Added: 2026-08-15 - Updated: 2026-08-17 - Page: https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells/magic-adverbs ## Description One adverb carries the entire claim. tropes.fyi names the family after its most common member. The sentence asserts that a large change happened without anyone noticing, which conveniently removes the obligation to say who noticed it, when, or how it was measured. The repair is never a smaller adverb. It is a date and a name. ## Why it reads as machine-written An unwitnessed change cannot be checked. The adverb supplies the drama and deletes the evidence in the same word, which makes it the cheapest available way to sound like reporting. Feature ledes use the move deliberately and then settle the bill in the next paragraph with a scene, a source and a time. The low-effort version never settles it. A separate semantic entry covers the claim-level version of this problem, where the inflation lives in the sentence rather than in one word; this rule stays on the adverb. ## Detection Type: deterministic (a regular expression, run as written) Scope: sentence ECMAScript regular expression. The build validator compiles it and tests it against this entry's own specimens. ```regex \b(?:quietly|silently|subtly|invisibly|steadily|slowly)\s+(?:reshap|transform|redefin|rewrit|upend|disrupt|reinvent|remak|revolutionis|revolutioniz)(?:e|es|ed|ing)\b ``` Flags: gi ## Examples Constructed specimens. Written for this index. Never quoted from anyone's posts. ### Specimen 1 Before, exhibiting the tell: > A handful of small studios are quietly reshaping how software gets sold. The shift has been under way for some time and nobody has quite noticed, which is more or less how shifts of this kind work. After, repaired: > Three studios we buy from moved to usage pricing between January and April. Two of them told us in the same week, after a customer asked why the invoice had changed. Note: Figures in this repair are invented for the specimen. ### Specimen 2 Before, exhibiting the tell: > This shift is subtly transforming the way distributed teams work together. After, repaired: > Our standup moved to a written thread in February. Attendance stopped being a question, and the two people in other time zones now answer first. ## False positives Who legitimately writes this way. Feature ledes carry drama on purpose, and a reporter who has spent a month on a story has earned the word. Trade press, obituaries and profile writing all use the unwitnessed-change frame as a hook before naming the witness two sentences later. Fiction uses it without any obligation at all. The reviewer check is whether the sentence, or the one after it, names who noticed the change and when. If the piece can produce a person and a date, the adverb is doing ordinary work. If the change has no observer anywhere in the text, the adverb is the only evidence offered. ## Model attribution Unattributed. Neither source separates model families, and no vendor documentation names the adverb family. ## Sources 1. tropes.fyi pattern directory https://tropes.fyi/directory (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) 2. vale-ai-tells, 111 machine-checkable rules https://github.com/tbhb/vale-ai-tells (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) ## Status history Ids are permanent. A retired tell keeps its id and its page. - 2026-08-15, Active: Opened as active. tropes.fyi names the adverb family directly and vale-ai-tells ships figurative and inevitability rules that catch neighbouring forms. Neither publishes a rate, so the grade stays community-observed and severity stays low. ## License CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Attribution: The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells Reuse the data, including commercially. Keep the attribution line. --- Dataset version 1.0.0. Schema version 1. Part of [FeedSquad](https://feedsquad.com). Built by [Herman Foundry](https://hermanfoundry.com) from Levi, Finnish Lapland.