active · lexical · first recorded 2026-07-02 · registers: hn
Emphatic “actual/actually” to signal getting-to-the-substance: “the actual problem”, “what's actually happening”. Six times the human rate.
model specificity: heaviest in Claude models
◑ appears in good human writing too (collateral score 0.18 — the closer to 1, the more it also fires on acclaimed pre-AI prose)
…the actual failure mode is subtler…
occurrences per 10k words, measured 2026-07 (run #2: 3 current + 3 vintage models, 3 matched registers, 1,392 samples)
| current AI | vintage AI (2024/25) | humans (matched) | canon (great pre-AI prose) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pooled | 3.83 | 1.10 | 0.89 | 0.68 |
| hn | 8.95 | — | 1.43 | |
| cooking | 1.13 | — | 1.08 | |
| parenting | 0.27 | — | 0.00 | |
| 1.09 | — | — |
literal: the actual