Key words, phrases and punctuation favored by AI have become more common on the web
Uses of __ per 10,000 words
Note: AI-typical vocabulary includes “additionally,” “align with,” “boasts,” “bolstered,” “crucial,” “delve,” “emphasizing,” “enduring,” “enhance,” “essential,” “fostering,” “garner,” “highlight,” “interplay,” “intricate,” “key,” “landscape,” “meticulous,” “perfectly,” “pivotal,” “showcase,” “significant,” “tapestry,” “testament,” “underscore,” “valuable,” “vibrant.” Samples filtered to pages published after Nov. 30, 2022. Plotted points represent six-month averages.
Source: Pew Research Center analysis of 490,000 English-language webpage texts sampled from the Common Crawl web repository.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER
Key words, phrases and punctuation favored by AI have become more common on the web
Uses of __ per 10,000 words
| Date | Em dash (per 10k words) | Oxford comma (per 10k words) | AI vocabulary (per 10k words) | Negative parallelism (per 10k words) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-01-01 | 5.79 | 34.04 | 11.94 | 0.87 |
| 2023-07-01 | 4.2 | 42.57 | 21.42 | 1.88 |
| 2024-01-01 | 5.32 | 46.25 | 25.66 | 1.9 |
| 2024-07-01 | 4.58 | 44.06 | 23.56 | 2.08 |
| 2025-01-01 | 6.3 | 48.35 | 24.79 | 2.52 |
| 2025-07-01 | 8.58 | 51.08 | 28.15 | 2.72 |
| 2026-01-01 | 11.19 | 55.51 | 26.02 | 2.36 |
Note: AI-typical vocabulary includes “additionally,” “align with,” “boasts,” “bolstered,” “crucial,” “delve,” “emphasizing,” “enduring,” “enhance,” “essential,” “fostering,” “garner,” “highlight,” “interplay,” “intricate,” “key,” “landscape,” “meticulous,” “perfectly,” “pivotal,” “showcase,” “significant,” “tapestry,” “testament,” “underscore,” “valuable,” “vibrant.” Samples filtered to pages published after Nov. 30, 2022. Plotted points represent six-month averages.
Source: Pew Research Center analysis of 490,000 English-language webpage texts sampled from the Common Crawl web repository.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER
