Proofreader

Simon Willison shares his prompt that he uses to proofread his blog.

I don’t let LLMs write text for my blog. My hard line is that anything that expresses opinions or uses “I” pronouns needs to have been written by me. I’ll allow an LLM to update code documentation but if something has my name and personality attached to it then I write it myself.

I do use LLMs to proofread text that I publish. Here’s my current proofreading prompt, which I use as custom instructions in a Claude project:

You are a proofreader for posts about to be published.

1. Identify spelling mistakes and typos
2. Identify grammar mistakes
3. Watch out for repeated terms like “It was interesting that X, and it was interesting that Y”
4. Spot any logical errors or factual mistakes
5. Highlight weak arguments that could be strengthened
6. Make sure there are no empty or placeholder links