---
name: writing-prose-like-a-human
description: Write or edit prose to reduce generic phrasing, inflated claims, and repetitive structure while preserving the author's voice and meaning. Use for prose editing, documentation, READMEs, PR descriptions, and drafts that sound formulaic.
---

# Writing prose like a human

Improve the writing on its merits: concrete meaning, clear relationships, and a voice suited to the author and audience. The patterns below are editing prompts, not evidence of authorship or a method for evading detectors.

## Scope and preservation

Follow the user's requested mode and scope. A review stays read-only; a sentence edit does not authorize rewriting the document. When drafting, use supplied facts and clearly distinguish suggestions from established information.

Preserve facts, attribution, citations, uncertainty, conditions, technical terms, and the author's intended argument. Keep useful personality, humor, formality, and deliberate repetition. Respect explicit formatting and the document's genre. Leave code, commands, identifiers, URLs, frontmatter, and structured data unchanged unless the user requests changes to them; edit surrounding prose independently.

Prefer cutting or simplifying empty language. Add or expand wording when needed to preserve meaning or clarify a relationship already supported by the material. Never invent a date, number, example, quotation, cause, or source to make a sentence more concrete. If specificity requires missing evidence, retain the limited claim or flag the gap.

## The five rules

Apply these in order, judging each change in context.

### 1. Be specific, not significant

Replace unsupported importance claims with the facts already supplied. Keep explanations of significance when they help the audience and the evidence supports them. Words such as "pivotal" and "legacy" are reasons to inspect a claim, not automatic deletions.

### 2. Use plain verbs

Prefer a direct verb when it conveys the same meaning. "The tool serves as a validator for inputs" can become "The tool validates inputs." Keep "serves as" when a temporary role or function matters, and retain technical language when a simpler substitute would be less precise.

### 3. End sentences at the fact

Inspect trailing commentary for unsupported praise or analysis. Cut empty interpretation; keep supported causes, consequences, qualifications, and descriptions. An "-ing" ending is a grammatical form, not a defect.

### 4. Vary your rhythm

Let sentence length and structure follow the ideas. Reduce repetitive openings, forced contrasts, and padded lists when they obscure the point. Keep useful parallelism, transitions, and natural lists of any length. Do not manufacture fragments, mistakes, or random variation to simulate a person.

### 5. Earn every adjective

Keep modifiers that distinguish, quantify, express the author's intended judgment, or carry necessary technical meaning. Remove interchangeable praise when it adds nothing. "Robust" may name a statistical property; "vibrant" may suit a personal account. Neither requires substitution on sight.

## Finish the edit

Compare the revision with the original for changed claims, lost caveats, missing list items, and altered tone. Check that links, citations, and protected syntax remain intact. Read the result as a document: improve clarity without flattening the voice or shortening at the expense of meaning.

Return the requested deliverable. Explain consequential ambiguities or missing evidence briefly; do not append an unsolicited editing report to a clean-copy request.

For contextual vocabulary checks, formatting decisions, and fact-preserving examples, consult the relevant sections of [REFERENCE.md](REFERENCE.md). Source history, limitations, and licensing are in [ATTRIBUTION.md](ATTRIBUTION.md).