# Sentence-opener repetition 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: sentence-opener-repetition - Category: Structural and syntactic (structural) - Subcategory: openers - Also known as: low start entropy, The and This openers, transition repetition - Status: Contested. Credible people dispute that this signals anything at all. - Severity: low - Evidence grade: community-observed (named by practitioners, no formal measurement exists) - Languages: en - Added: 2026-08-15 - Updated: 2026-08-15 - Page: https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells/sentence-opener-repetition ## Description Consecutive sentences starting from the same small set of words, usually a determiner or one of a handful of connectives. vale-ai-tells implements this as two separate checks, one measuring start entropy and one catching a repeated opener. The anti-slop prompt names the same habit from the other side, as something to suppress, which makes it inverted evidence; it is marked as such in the sources and it does not stand alone here. ## Why it reads as machine-written Openers are where a writer's rhythm shows. Four sentences in a row beginning with the same determiner means the draft was produced and not read back. The signal is weak on its own, because the same shape falls out of a plain declarative style that some people write on purpose. Anaphora abuse is the deliberate version, three or more clauses built to match; this entry is the accidental one, measured over function words. ## Detection Type: statistical (a measured metric against a threshold with a stated basis) Metric: share-of-consecutive-sentences-sharing-an-opening-word Threshold basis: > No threshold ships. No published baseline exists for opener repetition in human prose, and detector work shows that structural features of this family carried corpus artifacts rather than authorship. Report the share and the longest run, and treat a run of four as a FeedSquad reading cue that sends the draft back for a pass. It is not a measurement anyone has validated. ## Examples Constructed specimens. Written for this index. Never quoted from anyone's posts. ### Specimen 1 Before, exhibiting the tell: > The report landed on Friday. The numbers were lower than expected. The team met on Monday. The plan is being revised. After, repaired: > The report landed on Friday, and signups came in 12 percent under forecast. On Monday the team cut the paid channel and moved that budget to the newsletter, which had been the cheapest source all year. Note: Four sentences opening on the same word became two that open differently, and the repair names the number and the decision. Figures in this repair are invented for the specimen. ## False positives Who legitimately writes this way. Writers with a deliberately plain declarative style produce this shape on purpose, and it is standard in instructional and safety writing where every sentence names the same subject for a reason. University teaching centres list consistent sentence structure among the traits that get neurodivergent students falsely accused, and nobody has published a rate for that, so the measure has to stay a reading cue. Check whether the repeated opener refers to the same thing each time; if it does, the repetition is doing reference work and the prose is clearer for it. ## Model attribution No study reports opener repetition by model family. The habit is named in community rule sets and in one prompt written to suppress it, which dates the concern rather than measuring the behaviour. ## Sources 1. vale-ai-tells, 111 machine-checkable rules https://github.com/tbhb/vale-ai-tells (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) 2. anti-slop-writing system prompt and pattern list https://github.com/adenaufal/anti-slop-writing (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14; inverted evidence, cited for what it catalogues rather than what it advocates) ## Status history Ids are permanent. A retired tell keeps its id and its page. - 2026-08-15, Contested: Ships contested. Two community rule sets carry the pattern and one of them exists to suppress it, but no study measures it, and the shape is produced deliberately by writers with a plain declarative style. ## 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.