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Writing Tip: Embrace unpredictability in your sentence structure. Sure, say three things in a sentence sometimes. Other times, just stick to one thing. Consider the rhythm of your writing as music. Embrace tempo changes and emotional swells and contractions, rather than following a metronome's unchanging beat.

When AI writing tools write long-form responses, they tend to favor sentences with three objects. They like to say three things per sentence. 

For example, "OpenAI continues to develop and refine ChatGPT's model to address bias challenges, improve its performance, and expand its applications."  Or, “AI writing tools can help you with doing your homework, studying for tests, and creating project plans.” AI seems to be comforted by saying three things in a sentence.

AI writing tools tell us that this pattern is not intentional, but rather “a reflection of effective communication strategies embedded within their training data.” That training data most likely includes a significant amount of professional content: journalistic writing and academic papers, to name a couple. Professional writing probably employs this “rule of three” for clarity and engagement. As AI models intake and learn from this content, the AI will inherently adopt that style of writing. 

You may or may not believe that speaking and writing in this way is a principle of effective communication. Nevertheless, when you see a sentence saying, “The thing is x, y, and z,” it’s a stylistic tell. 

AI writing will always favor digestibility over creativity. Sentences structured with three components often strike a balance between brevity and comprehensiveness, allowing AI to convey a nuanced idea without overwhelming the reader. Structuring a sentence by the “rule of three” feels like a safe place where one is being informative, but not saying so much that it becomes cumbersome.  It's a method of packaging information in a digestible format.

As a human writer, you can afford the luxury of specificity. Why not dive into the minutiae of experiences, instead of summarizing them in one sweeping sentence with three objects? While that type of sentence structure sounds professional and academic, it feels less authentic. In other words, writing by the “rule of three” probably won’t evoke a strong connection between writer and reader.