09/17/2026
“This isn’t just a report, it’s a gateway to better decisions.”
Nobody ever said it that was just a report. The sentence invents an opponent so it can win. We see this pattern everywhere in AI-generated copy: “not only X, but also Y” or “not just X, but Y”. As if this were natural human writing.
We tested nine versions of this construction against our own automated checker. Seven went through undetected. And once we placed factual content between “not just” and “but”, it became even harder to catch.
The better option is much simpler: say the positive thing once.
“The report shows which accounts finished setup within 30 days.”
But there is one important distinction a word list would most certainly miss: Contrast is absolutely fine when both sides describe real alternatives.
“The error is in the import script and not in the database.”
Here, both possibilities are real, so the contrast actually adds information.
Our question for this week:
Who was arguing the other side? If the answer is nobody, delete that half.
More next week.
