mfred's personal page

Proofreading prompt

As I am not a native English speaker, and do not have any native English-speaker reader that I can bug to proofread what I write, I currently use Claude Code (with Sonnet model) for proofreading.

For transparency purposes, let me share here the prompt I currently use for that:

I want your help to proofread the file named $ARGUMENTS in the content/ folder of this repository. More specifically:

  • for unambiguous errors (misspelled word, obvious typo, missing or duplicated word, grammatical mistakes, unfinished sentences, invalid markdown syntax or internal references, remaining TODO, etc.): fix them by editing the file yourself when you can, or add a FIXME marker when you need more information from me (and I’ll edit it later)
  • I would like you to look for weirdly structured sentences, awkward/unclear/ambiguous wording, incorrect idiomatic expressions etc. I am not a native English speaker, so you will likely find quite a few of these. Please propose some alternatives when possible, or ask for additional information when needed. This is a personal site, I don’t want the content to look more polished or professional than needed; let’s just try to make the content as clear as possible, and not too painful to read for native speakers.
  • I would also like to know if you think the overall structure of the page makes sense, or if you think it might be better to organize its content differently.
  • I would also like you to think deeply about the content, and tell me if you think my reasoning is flawed or inaccurate. This is a personal website and the opinions I express here are mine, I do not want you to try to convince me to change my point-of-view: please just let me know if you have concerns about the consistency of the arguments I may have developed in that page.