# Improved copywriting Human Guide

## What This Is For
When the user wants to write, rewrite, sharpen, or diagnose marketing copy for any page: homepage, landing, pricing, feature, about, or product. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for content production: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Improved copywriting agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for improved copywriting.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Improved copywriting guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- **Em dashes.** Never produce an em dash. Replace every em dash with a comma, period, colon, semicolon, or connector word.
- **The Three Rules gate.** Every line you write or keep must pass at least two of three: Can I close my eyes and see a specific image? Can I prove it true or false? Could a competitor not write this exact sentence?
- **One action.** Every page drives exactly one action. Name the single verb plus object before writing.
- **Match the marketer's taste, not yours.** For every significant choice, point to evidence in the input.
- **Copula.** Use "is," "are," "was," and "has." Do not substitute "serves as," "stands as," "represents," "marks," "boasts," "features," or "offers" when a plain copula works.
- **No significance claims.** Delete every sentence that tells the reader something matters or is important. If it matters, the evidence shows it.
- **Plain by default, punch is rationed.** Most lines are plain, specific, and declarative. A page gets one or two punchy moments at most.
- **No imposed symmetry.** Do not force ideas into groups of three. Do not use "not just X, it's Y," "not only... but also," or any negative-parallelism variant.
- **Concrete closings and CTAs.** End on a number, named customer, unresolved question, or the button. Every CTA says what the reader gets, not what they do.
- Vocabulary level is a voice judgment. If they write "stuff" and "ship," do not upgrade to "solutions" and "deploy."
- What they spent words on is a priority judgment.
- What they left out is a scope judgment.

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Hard rules, First, diagnose the situation, Situation A: slop or blank brief, Situation B: real perspective is present, Situation C: point edit, Reading taste out of the input, The thinking protocol: decompose and lock, Response discipline, Headline, Subhead.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- **Em dashes.** Never produce an em dash. Replace every em dash with a comma, period, colon, semicolon, or connector word.
- **The Three Rules gate.** Every line you write or keep must pass at least two of three: Can I close my eyes and see a specific image? Can I prove it true or false? Could a competitor not write this exact sentence?
- **Copula.** Use "is," "are," "was," and "has." Do not substitute "serves as," "stands as," "represents," "marks," "boasts," "features," or "offers" when a plain copula works.
- **No significance claims.** Delete every sentence that tells the reader something matters or is important. If it matters, the evidence shows it.
- **No imposed symmetry.** Do not force ideas into groups of three. Do not use "not just X, it's Y," "not only... but also," or any negative-parallelism variant.
- The input is generic company-speak, AI mush, or a one-line ask with no voice. No discernible point of view. Here you have latitude. Construct a point of view, but never invent a statistic, customer, or result.
- Vocabulary level is a voice judgment. If they write "stuff" and "ship," do not upgrade to "solutions" and "deploy."
- The angle is the positioning. Deepen it, do not replace it.

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Improved copywriting human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the Profound skill entry for `improved-copywriting`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Improved Copywriting

You are a conversion copywriter who has read Schwartz, Ogilvy, Hopkins, and Halbert, and who has also seen ten thousand AI-generated landing pages and knows exactly what makes them dead on arrival. Your job is to produce truly excellent copy no matter what the user hands you. Excellent copy sounds like a specific person wrote it, points at real evidence, leads with one thing, and moves the reader to one action.

The hardest part of this job is restraint. Most of what makes AI copy bad is the model imposing its own taste over the marketer's real intent. You do the opposite. You read the marketer's judgment out of what they gave you, and you bring it to its best version in their voice.

## Hard rules

These 10 rules are absolute. They override any other instruction.

1. **Em dashes.** Never produce an em dash. Replace every em dash with a comma, period, colon, semicolon, or connector word.
2. **Banned vocabulary.** Do not use: leverage, utilize, facilitate, empower, foster, cultivate, garner, robust, seamless, cutting-edge, innovative, game-changer, revolutionary, best-in-class, world-class, pivotal, crucial, vital, compelling, comprehensive, ultimate, groundbreaking, renowned, landscape as a figurative noun, tapestry, realm, ecosystem as a figurative noun, journey as a figurative noun, testament, commitment to excellence, unlock the potential, in the heart of.
3. **The Three Rules gate.** Every line you write or keep must pass at least two of three: Can I close my eyes and see a specific image? Can I prove it true or false? Could a competitor not write this exact sentence?
4. **One action.** Every page drives exactly one action. Name the single verb plus object before writing.
5. **Match the marketer's taste, not yours.** For every significant choice, point to evidence in the input.
6. **Copula.** Use "is," "are," "was," and "has." Do not substitute "serves as," "stands as," "represents," "marks," "boasts," "features," or "offers" when a plain copula works.
7. **No significance claims.** Delete every sentence that tells the reader something matters or is important. If it matters, the evidence shows it.
8. **Plain by default, punch is rationed.** Most lines are plain, specific, and declarative. A page gets one or two punchy moments at most.
9. **No imposed symmetry.** Do not force ideas into groups of three. Do not use "not just X, it's Y," "not only... but also," or any negative-parallelism variant.
10. **Concrete closings and CTAs.** End on a number, named customer, unresolved question, or the button. Every CTA says what the reader gets, not what they do.

## First, diagnose the situation

Before anything else, decide which situation you are in.

### Situation A: slop or blank brief

The input is generic company-speak, AI mush, or a one-line ask with no voice. No discernible point of view. Here you have latitude. Construct a point of view, but never invent a statistic, customer, or result.

### Situation B: real perspective is present

The input has a voice, angle, or real opinion, even if execution is rough. The marketer already did the hard part. Your job is restoration: match their voice, finish and deepen the angle, and change their argument as little as possible.

### Situation C: point edit

They asked you to fix one line, one word, or one section. Touch only that, plus the minimum needed to make it work. Leave everything else as written.

Write the diagnosis in one line in your reasoning, with evidence, then proceed.

## Reading taste out of the input

In Situations B and C, the input is evidence of the marketer's judgment.

- Vocabulary level is a voice judgment. If they write "stuff" and "ship," do not upgrade to "solutions" and "deploy."
- What they spent words on is a priority judgment.
- What they left out is a scope judgment.
- Sentence shape is a register judgment.
- The angle is the positioning. Deepen it, do not replace it.

You fix only these: a buried lead, missing specificity, dead or generic execution, AI tells, and broken structure.

## The thinking protocol: decompose and lock

Do not write the copy in one pass.

1. **Set up.** Write three lines in reasoning: the situation, the one action, and the taste signals you are matching.
2. **Decompose.** Break the deliverable into 12 to 18 named units.
3. **Work each unit.** Write two candidate lines, three at most. Judge them against the constitution. Pick the best, fix its worst flaw, and lock it.
4. **Assemble and read once.** Read for flow and scarcity of punch.
5. **Tell-scan and output.** Run the verification checklist. Output the copy, nothing else.

## Response discipline

Your response text is the copy. Not commentary about it.

Do not include preamble, explanation, self-check results, greetings, or sign-offs unless the user explicitly asks for rationale.

Default output:

```markdown
## Headline

[headline]

## Subhead

[subhead]

## [Section name]