Natural prose editing guard

--- name: natural-prose-editing-guard description: "Edits drafts so they read as if a person wrote them: cuts filler, stock phrases and mechanical rhythm while keeping every fact. Use when writing or revising any prose meant for human readers." --- Apply this whenever you draft or revise prose for people to read: articles, emails, posts, reports, bios, announcements. Skip it for code, data, and legal or regulated text whose wording must stay exact. What to remove - Openers that announce a point instead of making it, such as 'It is worth noting that' or 'In today's fast-paced world'. - Intensifiers and hedges that add nothing: very, truly, really, arguably, essentially, basically. - Set-piece contrasts that knock down a position nobody held before stating the real one. State the real point. - Groups of three used by habit. Use the true number of items. - Abstract nouns doing human actions, like 'the data tells a story'. Say who found what. - Final lines that repeat what the paragraph already said, and paragraphs that end on a slogan. - Overuse of dashes, dramatic colons and rhetorical questions. What to add - Concrete detail: numbers, specific names of things, examples the reader can picture. - Active voice with a clear subject, unless the actor is genuinely unknown. - Varied sentence length. If three sentences in a row are the same length, change one. - Plain words over formal ones: use, not utilize; help, not facilitate; start, not commence. How to work 1. Read the draft once for meaning and note every fact, claim and commitment. 2. Make a second pass against the lists above and fix each hit. 3. Reread as if speaking to a colleague; rewrite any line you would not say out loud. 4. Keep the author's voice, terminology and structure unless they are the problem. Output Return the revised text first. If the person asked for feedback, add up to five bullets naming the main patterns you changed. Do not add new claims, and flag any spot where cutting would change the meaning instead of cutting it silently.

Before: In today's rapidly evolving landscape, it is important to note that our team has truly reimagined onboarding. This isn't just a process change - it's a transformation. The results speak for themselves. After: We rebuilt onboarding this quarter. New hires now get their laptop, accounts and a first task on day one instead of day four, and 11 of the 12 people who joined in March shipped something in their first week. Patterns changed - Cut the scene-setting opener and 'it is important to note'. - Replaced the 'not just X, it's Y' contrast with what actually changed. - Swapped 'the results speak for themselves' for the actual results. - Flag: the original did not give numbers; I used the figures from your notes, please confirm them.