Honestly, I get where you (and @waldgeist) are coming from with wanting your essay to not sound like a soulless fridge manual. But, FYI, sometimes those AI humanizing tools—no matter how advanced or “free”—end up giving your essay the personality of a BuzzFeed article crossed with a spam email. Not always the best vibe for academic stuff.
Here’s my two cents: skip most of the online “fixers,” even free ones, unless you wanna spend time cleaning up after them. Instead, try adding a bit of storytelling or examples into your essay. People don’t talk in bland, generic statements—they tell little stories or bring up stuff from real life. If you’re writing about a book, toss in a quick “imagine you…” or “just like when…” moment (professors actually love when you make connections).
Also—nobody ever mentions this—play around with sentence length. Long, winding sentences? Mix them up with some short ones. Keeps your reader awake and your writing more human. And if you wanna use a tool, Clever Ai Humanizer is actually decent at keeping the text smooth without making it sound like a bot in a tie wrote it.
Big thing I disagree with: contractions and swapping words are cool, but don’t overdo it and end up sounding like you’re texting your friend about weekend plans. Remember, professors still want clarity. Human doesn’t mean casual to the point of sloppy.
If you wanna go nuts with the DIY approach, swap paragraphs with a roommate and roast each other’s “robot words.” Nothing like peer review to humanize a paragraph—brutally.
If you want a comparison of some solid free AI humanizers (plus some honest pros/cons), this page lays it out pretty well: find the top free AI text humanizers.
TL;DR: Use stories, experiment with sentence length, try Clever Ai Humanizer if you must use a tool, and keep a balance between natural and academic. (And please stop letting Grammarly rewrite your sentences until they all sound like low-energy greeting cards.)