A deliberately short editing prompt: improves readability without changing structure, meaning, or the way you sound. The one people paste most often.
Rewrite the text below for clarity and flow.
Keep my original voice, structure, and meaning. Improve readability only.
Do not add new ideas. Do not change my argument. Do not remove hedges that
carry real uncertainty. Do not make it more formal than I wrote it.
Then list, in one line each, the three changes you made that mattered most.
TEXT:
{{TEXT}}A prompt is a skill with the serial numbers filed off. Install it once and your agent reaches for it on its own.
Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or whatever you use:
Install the clarity-rewrite-that-keeps-your-voice skill globally from https://promptsbuddy.com/prompts/clarity-rewrite-that-keeps-your-voice/skill.md.claude/skills/clarity-rewrite-that-keeps-your-voice/SKILL.md
---
name: clarity-rewrite-that-keeps-your-voice
description: "A deliberately short editing prompt: improves readability without changing structure, meaning, or the way you sound. The one people paste most often. Use when the user asks for help with writing tasks like editing, writing, clarity."
license: CC-BY-4.0
metadata:
source: https://promptsbuddy.com/prompts/clarity-rewrite-that-keeps-your-voice
author: "Rony"
version: "1.0"
---
# Clarity rewrite that doesn't flatten your voice
A deliberately short editing prompt: improves readability without changing structure, meaning, or the way you sound. The one people paste most often.
## Inputs to collect first
Ask the user for anything below that they have not already given you. Do not
invent values for these.
- `TEXT` — The paragraph or section to tighten. (e.g. Paste the text.)
## Instructions
Rewrite the text below for clarity and flow.
Keep my original voice, structure, and meaning. Improve readability only.
Do not add new ideas. Do not change my argument. Do not remove hedges that
carry real uncertainty. Do not make it more formal than I wrote it.
Then list, in one line each, the three changes you made that mattered most.
TEXT:
{{TEXT}}
## Notes from people who use this
- Short on purpose. Longer editing prompts start rewriting your argument instead of your sentences.
- The three-change list is how you learn to stop needing the prompt.
- If the output sounds smoother but less like you, your text had voice in the hedges — put them back.
---
Clarity rewrite that doesn't flatten your voice · by Rony · v1.0
From PromptsBuddy — https://promptsbuddy.com/prompts/clarity-rewrite-that-keeps-your-voice
Licensed CC BY 4.0.
Every prompt is also available at /prompts/clarity-rewrite-that-keeps-your-voice/skill.md — see all install options.
The most-used prompts in circulation are not the elaborate ones. They are three or four lines that solve a problem people hit every day, and this is the clearest example: almost everyone has a paragraph that is nearly right.
Longer editing prompts reliably overreach. Give a model a page of instructions about tone, audience, and structure and it will restructure. Give it one instruction — readability only — and it edits sentences, which is what you asked for.
"Do not remove hedges that carry real uncertainty." Without it, editing passes strip exactly the qualifications that made the writing honest, and you end up with confident prose making claims you did not intend.
A diagnostic-then-edit pass that names the specific tells in a draft — the tricolons, the hedges, the empty transitions — and fixes them without flattening your voice.
RonyA short setup prompt: hand it three things you've written, have it derive the rules of how you write, then hold it to them for the rest of the session.
Meghna