Communication Prose Revision

Communication Prose Revision

Purpose

Make communication and social-science writing sound like accountable scholarly argument rather than generated scaffolding. The target is clearer intellectual agency, not an “AI probability” score.

Required start

1. Lock the permitted passage, language, intervention level, claims, evidence, numbers, citations, constructs, terminology, and causal strength.
2. Identify the section function and study design. A Methods sentence, Results sentence, and Discussion sentence should not be revised by the same stylistic rule.
3. Read references/prose-diagnostics.md for the smell taxonomy. Read references/defensive-writing.md when the main problem is over-qualification or claim burial. Read references/section-sensitive-editing.md for full-section or manuscript passes.

Revision passes

1. Remove scaffolding: delete generic scene-setting, throat-clearing, redundant previews, and transitions that add no logical relation.
2. Recover the claim: place the substantive proposition early and name the actor, process, comparison, or evidence responsible for it.
3. Calibrate commitment: keep the one hedge required by design and uncertainty; remove stacked hedges, disclaimer chains, and defensive self-protection.
4. Repair paragraph logic: one controlling claim, evidence and interpretation in the appropriate order, a real bridge to the next paragraph.
5. Vary rhythm by function: vary sentence length and structure because reasoning requires it, not by cosmetic synonym swapping or random sentence splitting.
6. Restore scientific fidelity: compare before/after claims, numbers, citations, causal verbs, populations, limitations, and nonclaims.

Defensive writing rule

Do not confuse caution with vagueness. Good qualification names the exact boundary: sample, design, measurement, uncertainty, or context. Defensive writing delays or obscures a claim through generic caveats, repeated “may/might/could,” anonymous authority, excessive citation shielding, or apologies before evidence.

Prefer:

Claim → evidence or reasoning → exact boundary

over:

General caveat → literature shield → method apology → tentative claim → another caveat

Non-negotiable boundaries

• Never remove null, adverse, failed, or contradictory evidence to sound confident.
• Never strengthen association into causation, possibility into evidence, or a measured path into a demonstrated mechanism.
• Never delete limitations that materially bound interpretation; relocate and specify them when necessary.
• Never fabricate authorial voice. Use user-approved writing samples only as structural evidence and do not copy their sentences.
• Never claim text is “human-written,” predict detector outcomes, or help conceal required AI-use disclosure.
• Do not replace every repeated technical term with a synonym; construct stability is more important than lexical variety.

Audit tool

Run the optional local diagnostic before and after revision:

python scripts/audit_prose.py manuscript.md

It reports line-located rhetorical patterns, not authorship or detector probabilities. Treat every flag as a review candidate, not an automatic edit.

Output

Return the revised passage plus a concise ledger of deleted scaffolding, strengthened agency, hedge changes, paragraph repairs, and preserved scientific boundaries. If a sentence cannot be made more direct without changing the scientific claim, keep it and state why.