everville-prose

Everville Prose

Write with clarity and force for every Everville surface a human will read. Two disciplines, one skill:

1. Strunk's Elements of Style — what to do (clarity, concision, active voice)
2. Anti-AI-slop patterns — what to avoid (puffery, fake significance, em-dash spam)

When to Use

Any time you're producing sentences humans will actually read:

• Marketing pages on roya.business, roya.gallery, balicopter.com, bali.villas, everville.estate, portal.everville.estate
• PR bodies (paired with /explain-pr-changes)
• Commit messages
• Error messages and UI copy (portal, eva, dashboards)
• Investor updates, onboarding emails, portal flash messages
• README files, technical explanations, spec documents

If you're writing a sentence a human will see, use this skill.

Quick Checklist (the 80/20)

Before shipping any paragraph, check:

1. Active voice — "The dispatcher approved the booking" not "The booking was approved by the dispatcher"
2. Positive form — "Pending review" not "Not yet approved"
3. Specific and concrete — "214 investors" not "a large community"
4. No needless words — strike "in order to", "the fact that", "at this point in time"
5. No puffery — no "pivotal", "crucial", "vital", "testament", "enduring legacy", "seamless", "robust", "groundbreaking"
6. No empty -ing phrases — strike "ensuring reliability", "highlighting capabilities", "showcasing features"
7. No em-dash spam — at most one em dash per paragraph; comma or period usually works
8. Has a voice — if every sentence is the same length and structure, rewrite

Two Disciplines

A. Strunk's Elements of Style

Load the relevant section from references/elements-of-style/ when editing. Most tasks only need 03-elementary-principles-of-composition.md.

Section	File	~Tokens	When to load
Elementary rules of usage	02-elementary-rules-of-usage.md	2,500	Comma/grammar questions
Composition principles	03-elementary-principles-of-composition.md	4,500	Default — most tasks
Form (headings, quotes)	04-a-few-matters-of-form.md	1,000	Formatting decisions
Misused words	05-words-and-expressions-commonly-misused.md	4,000	Word-choice questions

B. Anti-AI-Slop

Load references/signs-of-ai-writing.md for the full catalog. The top patterns to strip:

Pattern	Before	After
Undue significance	"This represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of…"	"This is new."
Promotional adjectives	"seamless, robust, cutting-edge solution"	"it works"
Overused AI vocabulary	"delve, leverage, multifaceted, foster, realm, tapestry"	plain English
Empty -ing phrases	"ensuring reliability and showcasing features"	delete
Rule of three	"faster, stronger, smarter"	pick one
Negative parallelism	"not just X but Y"	just say Y
Excessive conjunctive phrases	"moreover, furthermore, additionally"	break the paragraph

Add a Voice

Avoiding slop is only half the job. Sterile, voiceless prose is just as obvious. Good writing has a human behind it.

• Vary rhythm: short punchy sentences. Then longer ones that take their time.
• Have opinions; don't just report facts.
• Use "I" when it fits. First person isn't unprofessional — it's honest.
• Acknowledge complexity: "this is impressive but also unsettling" beats "this is impressive".
• Be specific about feelings: not "concerning" but "unsettling to watch agents churn at 3am while nobody's watching".

Limited Context Strategy

When context is tight, dispatch a subagent:

1. Write your draft using judgment
2. Dispatch a subagent with the draft + the one relevant reference file
3. Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision

A single section loads ~1,000-4,500 tokens instead of everything.

Everville-specific gotchas

• Don't use "everville.estate team" in copy aimed at operators — use the brand the user is on (balicopter, roya, bali.villas)
• Marketing voice for roya.* is cinematic/intimate; balicopter.com is precise/aviation; portal.everville.estate is dry/functional. Don't mix.
• Never put emoji in PR bodies, commit messages, or commit-authored content unless the user explicitly asks. Global CLAUDE.md rule.
• Never use em-dashes with spaces around them — Everville house style is no-space em-dashes or comma/period

References

• references/elements-of-style/ — the four Strunk sections
• references/signs-of-ai-writing.md — Wikipedia's detailed AI-slop catalog