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Detector tell · 2 patterns · weight 3

Two set phrases that stand in for saying what happened

Two rows at weight 3, both matching a fixed collocation rather than a single word.

Our detector calls this category “Overused structure”. The patterns below are read out of functions/api/tools/detect.js when this page is built, and the examples are produced by running the shipped scorer over the 48 licensed samples in our benchmark. If a claim here stops matching the engine, the build fails.

What our own benchmark saw

Did not appear anywhere in the benchmark — no human sample and no AI sample. That is a fact about the benchmark. This label fires on text matching its own pattern; the probe below is run on every build and fails it if it stops.

We are not going to invent an example to fill the gap. What we can show instead is a sentence we wrote ourselves, purely to check that the rule is live.

A constructed example — written by us, not evidence

This sentence was written for this check. It is not from the benchmark, nobody wrote it as real prose, and it says nothing about how anyone writes. Its only job is to prove the rule still fires, and the generator fails the build if it stops.

“The repair plays a crucial role in keeping the bridge open.”

  • /plays a crucial role/gi → “plays a crucial role”

What it means when a person writes this way

Both phrases are old, both are ordinary in journalism and grant writing, and both are what a writer produces when they need to assert importance without specifics. That is worth editing out for reasons that have nothing to do with detection. Neither fired on our corpus.

The patterns, as the engine holds them

2 of the 70 rows in our phrase table carry this label. They are printed here as they are written, because a paraphrase of a regular expression is a different regular expression.

/plays a crucial role/gi weight 3

Matches “plays a crucial role” , in any capitalisation .

/a testament to/gi weight 3

Matches “a testament to” , in any capitalisation .

What a hit does to your score

The phrase model is one of four in our ensemble, and its formula is patternScore = min(98, max(5, 10 + 7 x total weight)). One occurrence of the heaviest row in this category takes that model from 10 to 31 out of 100 — and the pattern model carries 40% of the ensemble when the em-dash signal fires and 55% when it does not.

Weight 3 puts a single occurrence at the same load as "delve into" — enough on its own to move the pattern model from 10 to 31, and nothing like enough to reach any floor.

Check your own text

Our detector is free and shows you which sentences it flagged and why, including this category. It also gets things wrong, and we publish how often.

Run the detector Our measured error rates If you have been accused Which registers score highest

Other things the detector looks for