Check your writing
These are my preferences, not rules of good writing. Leave this off unless you want them.
Your text stays on this page. Nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is saved. Close the tab and it is gone.
Five skills for an AI tool
Each skill can review your writing and leave it alone, or rewrite it without adding a fact you did not give. Each one carries all its own rules, so you can paste a single file into any AI chat.
| Skill | For | Install |
|---|---|---|
| plain-writing | Any piece of writing | npx skills add shaunmarsden/say-it-plainly --skill plain-writing |
| plain-email | Emails and messages | npx skills add shaunmarsden/say-it-plainly --skill plain-email |
| plain-notes | Meeting and call notes | npx skills add shaunmarsden/say-it-plainly --skill plain-notes |
| plain-report | Reports and proposals | npx skills add shaunmarsden/say-it-plainly --skill plain-report |
| plain-post | Posts and web pages | npx skills add shaunmarsden/say-it-plainly --skill plain-post |
No install needed. Open a skill on GitHub, click Raw, copy the whole file, paste it into any AI chat, then paste your writing underneath.
The twelve rules
- Write for one reader.
- Put the point first.
- One idea to a sentence.
- Use the short, everyday word.
- Cut what does no work.
- Name who did it.
- Drop stock phrases and filler.
- Be specific enough to be checked.
- Keep real uncertainty and cut the rest.
- Say how two things relate.
- Claim no more than you know.
- Break any rule before you write something clumsy.
Each skill spells these out, and adds the few rules that belong to its kind of writing.
What this does not do
- The checker looks at words and sentence length. It cannot tell whether you are right, or whether your writing is any good.
- It will flag things that are fine. A hedge may be honest. A long sentence may be the right one. Ignore a flag when you have a reason.
- "Common in machine-written text" is not an AI detector. Plenty of people write like that too.
- Reading ease is an estimate from word and sentence length. It is not a verdict.
- I have tested only that the skills keep a draft's claims when they rewrite it, on three made-up drafts. I have not tested whether they improve real writing, and I will not say they do until I have.
- English only.