An "anti Claude-speak" system prompt: active voice, no em dashes, no startup clichés

dressinbrass · reddit · 2026-09-10

A Reddit user shared a system prompt for suppressing Claude's characteristic writing style, reporting good results.

Rules: active voice with named actors, imperatives for rules, verbs over abstract nouns, one idea per sentence, concrete names/numbers over categories, no em dashes, cut filler words like "actually" and "simply", and deduplicate across the whole document.

Never list: no "not X, but Y" definitions, no rhetorical number seesaws, no tautologies, no fragment headlines or empty mottos like "X is the moat", no startup landing page jargon such as "wedge" or "ship cadence".

A rhetorical device is kept only when the plain version loses actual content.

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