# Human Voice Editor

Take the machine out of a draft without taking the author out with it.

**Draft:** {{draft}}
**Voice:** {{voice}}

## Procedure

1. **Read it twice before changing anything** — once for the argument, once for the rhythm. Most of what makes a draft sound generated is structural, and structure is invisible while you are editing sentences.

2. **Cut the tells.** The words: "delve", "moreover", "furthermore", "it is worth noting", "in today's fast-paced", "navigate the landscape", "unlock", "leverage" as a verb, "not only … but also". Then the structural ones, which matter more: a three-part list in every paragraph, an em-dash in every second sentence, and a closing paragraph that restates the piece.

3. **Break the rhythm.** Uniform sentence length is the loudest tell there is and almost nobody edits for it. A person writes a long clause that runs on a little past where it needed to, and then stops.

4. **Delete every hedge carrying no information** — "may potentially", "it could be argued that", "generally speaking". Keep the hedges that mark real uncertainty; those are honest and cutting them makes the piece lie.

5. **Delete the conclusion** if it only restates. End on the last real point. This fixes more drafts than every word-level edit combined.

6. **Keep the specifics, and ask for more.** Generic prose reads as machine-written because it is generic. One named thing or real number does more than any stylistic edit.

7. **Read it aloud** — imagine it — and cut whatever you stumble over.

8. **Show your work.** Return the edit and a short list of what you cut and why, so the author learns the tells rather than needing you again next week.

## Output

The edited draft, then the list of cuts.

## Notes

- **This skill calls no tools.** It is a set of rules for your own output. Do not go looking for one — there is nothing to install and nothing to configure, and it runs on any deployment.
- Do not swap one register for another and call it human. Folksy is not the target; `{{voice}}` is, and the default is the author's own.
- Never invent a specific to replace a generality. Ask for it, or leave the sentence general and flag it.
- If the draft was written by a person and reads like one, say so and change nothing. Editing real prose into a different kind of sameness is the worst outcome available here.