ClaudeEditingLevel 2: Context

How Do You Stop Claude Rewriting Your Voice When It Edits?

Name the one problem you want fixed, tell Claude to return every other sentence unchanged, and show it two or three samples of your own writing. An open request like "improve this" invites a rewrite, and a rewrite is where your voice goes.

Prompt to copy 
These are samples of my writing. Use them to understand how I sound. Don't quote them.

<examples>
<example>[a paragraph you wrote]</example>
<example>[another paragraph, ideally on a different topic]</example>
</examples>

Here is the draft to edit:

<draft>
[paste the draft]
</draft>

Fix only this: [for example, grammar errors and sentences a reader would need to read twice].

This is going to people who read me for how I write, so a sentence that has none of those problems must come back exactly as I wrote it. Where a change is needed, use the smallest one that fixes it, and match my sentence length and word choices. Keep any fragments and informal phrasing that aren't errors.

Return the edited text, then list each change as: original, new, reason.
More of your writing changesLess of it changes
  • "Improve this"
  • One named problem
  • Plus samples of you
A rule of thumb, not an Anthropic chart: the narrower the job, the less of your writing gets touched.

Try it now

  1. 1Find two paragraphs you wrote without help, and paste them into the prompt with your draft.
  2. 2Send it and read only the change list. Reject any change whose reason is about style when you asked for grammar.
  3. 3If too much changed, reply: "Restore every sentence that had no error."
  4. 4You'll know it worked when someone who knows you couldn't spot the edit, and your unchanged sentences match the original word for word.

Use it when

Personal essays, newsletters, opinion pieces, founder letters, and anything signed with your name. It also fits a draft where someone's distinctive style is the reason people read them, or a non-native speaker's draft that needs correct grammar and should still sound like them.

Skip it when

Skip the constraint when the text should have no personal voice, such as release notes or a policy. There, a consistent house style matters more than one person's quirks. Also skip it if you actually want a stronger voice than the draft has. That's a rewrite request, so ask for one.

Why it works

Anthropic's prompting guide calls examples one of the most reliable ways to steer tone and structure, and suggests 3 to 5 of them in <example> tags. Samples show what instructions can't, such as how long your sentences run and how often you use a fragment.

Its guide also says to explain why, because Claude can generalize from the reason. "Keep my fragments, because this is a personal newsletter" gives it more to work with than "keep my fragments". And it says to tell Claude what to do rather than what to avoid. "Change a sentence only if it has an error" is stronger than "don't change my style". Selecting text helps too: Claude for Word says it edits only the selection you make.

Example

Say your monthly newsletter opens with short, blunt sentences and a few one-word paragraphs. You give Claude two past openings as samples, then ask it to fix errors and any sentence that's hard to follow in this month's 800-word draft. The change list might show six small fixes. You can spot straight away if it tried to join your short sentences together, and reject just those. Your one-word paragraphs aren't errors, and the prompt says so.

Going further

Watch for flourish on Fable 5.1. Anthropic's guide for that model says its prose can run denser, with longer sentences and fewer paragraph breaks, and it suggests naming the pattern. Its short version is "Please remove all mannered prose." Add that when an edit returns metaphors you never wrote.

If you do this often, stop pasting samples. Open a new chat, say you want to create a skill, and upload past work, as Anthropic's tutorial describes. Skills can apply patterns from your own writing, and you toggle them at Customize > Skills.

Common mistakes

  • Using "make it sound better" together with "keep my voice". The first instruction asks for what the second one forbids, so name the actual problem.
  • Giving samples that were already edited by AI, or written for another purpose. Claude copies what you show it, so use your own unassisted work in a similar format.
  • Sending a long list of don'ts. Anthropic's guide says to say what to do instead, and to match your prompt's style to the output you want.
  • Reading only the final text. Polished copy is easy to accept, so read the change list, where a lost phrase is visible.

Sources

Checked 6 November 2026. Products change often, so confirm details with the vendor.

Related

Technique How Do You Make Claude Keep the Same Voice in Every Chat? Workflow How Do You Edit With Claude One Pass at a Time? Technique How Do You Get Claude to Cut a Draft to Length? Technique How Do You Refactor Code That Has No Tests?

Beyond the course

Glossary Prompt engineering Pricing guide Claude pricing, plans and models