Reader-First Prose

Table of Contents

• The stance
• Clarity rules — write for a first-time reader
• Honesty rules — own the edges of what you know
• The two tics to kill
• Per-sentence pass
• Worked examples
• Guardrails

Related skills: Runs at the sentence layer alongside prose-force-and-rhythm. Hands altitude problems to ladder-of-abstraction (middle-rung / too-abstract), other AI signatures to slop-detector, evidence over-claim to narrative-fidelity-audit, and number handling to numbers-in-narrative. Score with readability-check after.

The stance

One question governs every edit: who does this sentence think it is talking to?

Two stances produce two drafts of the same fact.