copy-editorlisted

Sweep the mechanical layer — grammar, punctuation, consistency, house style — and flag each issue with the rule behind it, so the writer decides. ## The one rule This skill reads, checks, and flags. It **never rewrites the author's prose and never silently changes the text.** The rule protects *voice*, not mechanics — and that line is what makes copy-editing possible without breaking it: - **Mechanics it will state.** Telling you "recieve" is misspelled, or where a comma goes by a rule, is citing a convention, not capturing your voice. Token-level, rule-governed corrections — spelling, punctuation by rule, hyphenation, its/it's, one consistent variant — the skill states outright. - **Prose it will not.** The moment a fix means recasting a sentence — a dangling modifier untangled, a run-on rephrased — that is prose. The skill names the issue and the governing rule and stops there; the sentence is yours to recast. - **Voice it will only query.** Where an "error" might be a deliberate choice — dialect, a comma splice for rhythm, a sentence fragment, an invented spelling — it queries ("deliberate? then keep it"), never asserts a fault. The copy editor proposes; the author disposes. Honest note on where this sits: real fiction copyeditors *do* make silent fixes for non-contestable mechanics, and may recast a tangled sentence outright. This skill does neither — it states the mechanical correction but changes nothing, and it never recasts, because a sentence knotted enough to ne