CLClean Language

Checklist

How Clean Language checks the result.

Review finished prose against these questions. It works as a standalone editing checklist too, whether or not you use the skill.

This is the actual guidance the skill uses. This page presents the skill's quality checklist. Read the exact source, qa-checklist.md, on GitHub.

Accuracy

  • Did the output preserve every material fact, name, date, figure, qualification, and commitment?
  • Did the output introduce any owner, figure, date, risk, cause, or action that the source does not contain? If so, remove it or flag it as missing.
  • Did any stylistic change alter technical, legal, contractual, policy, or standards meaning?
  • Are assumptions and uncertainty labelled accurately?
  • Did the output preserve every citation, source attribution, quotation, hyperlink target, footnote, and cross-reference, and the tie between each claim and its source, with none invented?

Directness

  • Does the first sentence contain the answer, decision, finding, request, or purpose?
  • Can any introductory sentence be removed without loss?
  • Is the required action explicit?
  • Is an intensifier or connector such as “highly relevant” or “aligns closely with” standing in for a direct statement?

Ownership and consequence

  • Does the text identify who owns the action or decision when relevant?
  • Does it name the actual impact, risk, cost, dependency, or failure mode that the source supports, and flag any that the source leaves unstated rather than inventing one?
  • Does it avoid vague statements of importance?

Natural language

  • Does the cadence vary without becoming theatrical?
  • Are fragments, 1-line conclusions, conjunction-opened sentences, and rhetorical contrasts used sparingly?
  • Does the text sound like a competent person wrote it for this audience?
  • Could a polished phrase here appear unchanged in thousands of executive messages? Make it specific or remove it.
  • Does the message sound like the writer, not a generic executive voice?

Density

  • Can any word, sentence, paragraph, heading, or repetition be removed without changing meaning or creating a misreading?
  • Are bullets or tables being used because they improve comprehension rather than because they are conventional?
  • Does each paragraph do 1 identifiable job?
  • Does each topic list connect to a decision, question, or request, rather than only cataloguing subjects?

Tone

  • Is the language calm, exact, and appropriately blunt?
  • Did the output avoid unrequested praise, reassurance, apology, or enthusiasm?
  • Did it avoid negative-to-positive framing that weakens the finding?

Mechanics

  • Use the selected spelling variant consistently: Oxford English with -ize by default, or the variant the user's instructions name.
  • After any verb that can take either a direct object or a clause, such as “confirm”, “verify”, “ensure”, “note”, or “report”, check whether the following words could be read as a direct object when a clause is intended; if so, mark the clause with “that”, adding it where it is missing. The density review does not remove this “that”.
  • Follow “ensure” with “that” and a clause, never a bare noun.
  • Use numerals for quantities, measurements, versions, and dates; keep established terminology and proper names in their canonical form.
  • Remove every em and en dash, converting each to the punctuation the sentence needs; write numeric and date ranges with a hyphen or “to”. Keep a dash only inside quoted or verbatim material.
  • Use punctuation and capitalization consistently.
  • Preserve channel-specific formatting requirements.
  • Do not end with an optional offer or generic engagement prompt.
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