Prose Revision

Prose Revision

A language model writes from a context the reader does not have, in phrases it has seen a million times. Left alone, the output is waffle: pre-assembled, abstract, padded. This skill is the revision pass that strips it.

The five

1. Concrete beats abstract. Nouns and verbs carry the sentence. "More people died", not "mortality rose". A reached-for adverb is a weak verb's symptom: fix the verb.
2. Cut what the reader already has. Compression targets redundancy with what the reader knows, not word count. A useful target: second draft = first draft minus ten percent.
3. No pre-assembled phrases. If the phrase arrived whole ("it's important to note", "seamlessly", "in today's fast-paced world"), it goes. The escape from a cliché is the literal statement, not a fresher metaphor. A metaphor earns its place twice: by being fresh, and by being clearer than the plain sentence it replaces. Otherwise delete it, do not upgrade it.
4. Show the thing, don't label the reaction. Do not call it "powerful", "delightful", or "robust"; describe it so the reader says that. Adjectives that tell the reader how to feel are you doing their reading for them.
5. The override. When any rule fights clarity, clarity wins. In doubt between plain and clever, choose plain.

The tells

Readers have learned what machine prose looks like. Any of these outs the piece as generated, whatever the byline says, and each one costs trust the rest of the copy then has to buy back:

• The em-dash habit. The model's favourite hinge. House rule: none in published copy; full stops, commas and colons do the work. (Quote attribution is the exception: "— {name}".)
• The automatic triad. "Deep-dives, insights, and lessons learned." Three parallel items, every time, none load-bearing. Keep the one that matters.
• The apposition chain. "Fast, reliable, built for scale." Adjectives queueing to be believed. One claim with a receipt beats three without.
• Hedged capability. "What AI could do", "what's actually possible". If it happened, say it happened. If it did not, it does not go in.
• Numbers nobody can trace. A real number is a receipt. A rounded flourish is a tell. If you cannot say where it came from, cut it.
• The manufactured catchphrase. Ending every page with the same clever CTA reads as a template within a week, and replacing it with a fresh catchphrase restarts the clock. End plainly, and vary.

The pass

Draft freely first; prose composed under these rules comes out stilted. Then revise:

1. Bracket every word not doing useful work. Delete each bracket you cannot defend.
2. Per sentence: what am I trying to say? Do these words say it? Could I put it more shortly?
3. Read it as the reader, who does not have your context. Codenames invented mid-task, shorthand from the work, conclusions without the evidence: expand or cut.

Not Hemingway

Overcorrected prose fails the same test flabby prose fails.

• Flabby: "It is important to note that the deployment process can take a significant amount of time."
• Overcorrected: "Deploys: slow."
• Right: "Deploys take about ten minutes."

The passive is correct when the object is the point: "the config is loaded before routes register", because the loader is nobody. An adverb that changes meaning stays ("silently fails"); an adverb that adds volume goes ("very quickly" means find a faster verb). Vary sentence length. A paragraph of uniform short sentences reads like a telegram, and that is a costume too.

Where it does not apply

Code, commit messages, comments, chat replies, terminal output: those want boring convention. And anything in the human's own voice, such as a draft they will reword, keeps their voice. Suggest, don't sand.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: StuMason
• Source: StuMason/skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.