Read for the things detectors react to — uniform sentence length, heavy formulaic signposting, and paragraphs that summarise rather than argue — and rewrite those passages in your own voice, for clarity.
Then run a private check if you want a second opinion, and keep your drafts either way. The aim is writing that reads like you, not writing that games a tool.
What to read for
You can do most of this without any software. Detectors score how predictable prose is, and the same features that make writing predictable also make it flat to read — so this pass improves the essay whether or not anyone ever runs a detector on it.
- Sentence length. Read a paragraph aloud. If every sentence lands at roughly the same length, the rhythm is machine-flat. Vary it — a short one after two long ones does more work than any other single edit.
- Formulaic signposting. “This essay will argue that…”, “It can be suggested that…”, “In today's society…”. Not wrong, just empty. Cut them and start with the actual claim.
- Paragraphs that end where the source ends. If a paragraph finishes summarising rather than saying what the evidence means, that's description — and it's also what a marker penalises. See what grade will my essay get.
- Hedging stacked on hedging. “It could arguably be suggested that it may perhaps…” — pick one hedge and commit.
Read a page out loud. The sentences you stumble over are the ones to rewrite. This catches more than any tool, costs nothing, and works on writing you produced entirely yourself.
The night before a deadline
If you're short on time, do these four in order and stop when the time runs out:
- Introduction and conclusion, back to back. Do they answer the same question? If not, fix the conclusion — it's the cheapest large gain available.
- First sentence of every paragraph, read in sequence. They should form an argument, not a list of topics.
- Reference list against in-text citations. Anything in one and not the other is a mark you're giving away, and it takes ten minutes. See checking your Harvard referencing.
- One read-aloud pass on whichever section you wrote most tired.
What not to do at 2am: a wholesale rewrite. Late-night rewriting of a finished essay reliably makes it worse, and a paraphrasing tool run over your own prose makes it worse and riskier — see using AI for grammar.
Where a private check fits
After your own pass, not instead of it. A scan is useful for the thing you can no longer see on the fourth read — which specific passages read as machine-like, and why. What it can't do is predict your university's detector: different tool, different threshold, and as covered in can Turnitin be wrong about AI, the whole category is less reliable than it markets itself as.
Whatever the result, keep your drafts and version history. If a flag ever comes, that's the evidence that settles it — not the score from any checker, including ours.
SafeGrade shows you which passages read as machine-like, checks referencing and grammar, and gives a rough grade band. Never stored, never used for training.
Run one free scan →No card. No catch. First scan free.