write-better-prose

name	write-better-prose
description	Use when writing or editing prose for human readers (blog posts, announcements, changelogs, docs, READMEs, emails, social posts) or when asked to remove AI-isms, humanize text, de-slop a draft, or fix writing that "sounds like AI." Symptoms include em-dash overuse, hype openers, hashtag blocks, rule-of-three rhythm, buzzword vocabulary, and text that reads generic or engineered.

Write Better Prose

Overview

LLM slop is the statistically likeliest text: the same punctuation, the same three-beat rhythm, the same hype arc, regardless of topic. Structure and formatting give you away before vocabulary does. Detection tools weight rhythmic uniformity above word choice, and present-participle padding ("..., highlighting its importance") runs at roughly 5x the human rate. Swapping "delve" for "dig into" fixes nothing if the rhythm stays metronomic.

Core principle: specifics over ceremony. Every sentence carries a fact, a claim, or a consequence the reader didn't already have. Everything else is padding.

Hard rules (mechanical, scan before delivering)

Any hit means the text is not done:

1. Zero em dashes and en dashes (—, –, --). Replace with a period, comma, colon, or parentheses. Exception: the author's own draft already uses them as a deliberate style.
2. Zero emoji, unless the user's draft or explicit request uses them.
3. Bold: at most one phrase per section. Never bold-label bullets ("Performance: improved...").
4. Hashtags: none in long-form. On social posts, 0-3, each specific enough to help someone find related work. Never a trailing tag block.
5. No contrastive negation in any form: "It's not X, it's Y", the split version ("The headline isn't speed. The story is Y."), or the stacked countdown ("It's not A. It's not B. It's C."). State Y directly.

The contract (what finished prose is)

• The first sentence contains information: a number, a name, an event. Not a mood, not "In today's fast-paced world."
• Every section, the intro included, ends on substance: its strongest specific claim, consequence, or open tension. The last sentence of an opening is the hook that earns the next section, not a prose table of contents ("The rest of this post covers...").
• Claims carry their evidence in the same sentence. "Cut p99 from 800ms to 90ms," not "dramatically faster." A claim with no number, name, date, or mechanism attached gets one or gets cut.
• Verbs are plain: is, has, does, uses, runs. Not "serves as," "boasts," "features," "leverages."
• Sentence lengths spread wide. Within any ~150 words there is a short sentence (6 words or fewer) and a long one (25+). Fragments allowed.
• Items group in twos and fours as often as threes. An exact-three list of praise ("careful testing, deep debugging, and persistence") is the template talking.
• Each paragraph adds one new fact or turn. If two paragraphs could swap without the reader noticing, the piece is a list wearing a prose costume: restructure or make it an honest list.
• The final sentence states a fact or consequence. Not a toast ("Proud of this one. On to the next!"), not a horizon ("Exciting times ahead").
• The right word repeats. No synonym cycling (developers, engineers, practitioners, builders in one paragraph).
• Where the genre wants a voice (blog, essay, social), have one: state a preference, admit a mixed feeling, keep one aside. Clean but voiceless is still slop.
• Where it does not (docs, reference, API pages), neutral and plain IS the correct human voice. Do not inject opinions or first person there.

Process

1. Draft to the contract. Do not draft the template planning to fix it later; the template is the problem.
2. Audit. Ask: "What makes this read as AI-generated?" Scan against ai-tells.md: formatting, structure, framing, vocabulary. Quoted examples and code blocks are exempt.
3. Fix, then re-scan the hard rules (search the text for —, –, emoji, **, #).

Editing someone else's text

• Fix errors and tells. Keep voice markers: fragments, contractions, ALL-CAPS emphasis, sentence-initial And/But, idiosyncratic word choices, profanity, oddly specific details. These are evidence of a person.
• Never introduce punctuation or formatting the original does not use. No new dashes, bold, headlines, or exclamation points.
• Quoted material, code blocks, and text attributed to someone else stay untouched.
• "Improve this" means tighten and specify. It does not mean decorate.
• If the author wants their piece checked, not changed (copyedit, proofread, review), switch to the copyediting-blog-posts skill: its output is a report of fixes and suggestions, never a rewrite. This skill is for prose you produce or are asked to transform.

Rationalizations

Excuse	Reality
"An em dash is punchier here"	The dash is the single most recognized tell, and baseline agents insert it unprompted while calling it "punchier." A period is punchier.
"LinkedIn posts need emoji and hashtags"	The number in sentence one does the reach work. Tag blocks read as bot output.
"Improving means making it pop"	Improving means the reader learns more in fewer words. Bold headlines on a changelog entry are decoration, not improvement.
"One rule of three flows naturally"	It is never one. The triad is the model's default cadence; break it on sight.
"This piece needs context before the point"	The point is the context. Open with it.
"Caps-lock looks unprofessional, italics are cleaner"	The caps were the author's voice. Style-normalizing a person out of their own prose is the failure, not the fix.

Red flags: stop mid-keystroke

• Typing —
• 🚀, "Thrilled to announce," "Big milestone"
• "The hardest part? ..." / "The result?" / "Here's the thing"
• "results speak for themselves"
• "For years, X served us well. But as we grew, the cracks started to show."
• A closing toast or a closing horizon
• Exactly three parallel items of praise
• A mirrored pair of short sentences ("The latency win was the goal. The rewrite was the work." / "Engineers build. Managers ship."). Engineered symmetry; say it once, plainly.
• "genuinely," "truly," "really" propping up a claim

Quick reference

Instead of	Write
"It's not X, it's Y"	Y, as a direct statement
delve into	dig into, look at, cover
leverage / utilize	use
robust / seamless / comprehensive	the specific property, or nothing
serves as / boasts / features	is / has
"In today's rapidly evolving..."	the actual fact, first
"Moreover" / "Furthermore"	"And," "also," or a new sentence
"could potentially" / "may eventually"	pick one word
"It's important to note that"	(delete, state the point)
"I hope this helps!"	(delete)

Common mistakes

Mistake	Fix
Fixing vocabulary, keeping the rhythm	Vary sentence and paragraph lengths first; words second
De-slopping into sterility	Neutral register everywhere is its own tell; match voice to genre
Flagging single tells in others' writing	One dash means nothing; clusters convict
Polishing quoted examples	Quotes, code, and cited text are exempt
Patching a fully templated draft	5+ vocabulary hits, 3+ structural patterns, uniform rhythm: rebuild from the core point instead (ai-tells.md has the threshold)