Slide Copy Sharpener

Most slide decks are written like documents — full sentences, multiple ideas, complete paragraphs — then read aloud to the audience, which is the most effective way to bore a room. The fix isn't just "use fewer words." It's using the RIGHT fewer words — words that convey the takeaway instantly and create space for the speaker to add value verbally. Sharpened slide copy transforms a mediocre deck into a professional one without redesigning a single visual.

Five passes, applied in order, to every slide. Pass 1 — Assertion: rewrite every slide title as a complete assertion, not a topic label. "Q3 Revenue" becomes "Q3 revenue hit £4.2M — our best quarter." A deck where every title is an assertion can be flipped through in 60 seconds and the reader gets the whole story. Pass 2 — Brevity: no bullet exceeds 8 words (4-6 ideally), filler gets cut ("in order to" → "to"), sentences become fragments, everything else moves to speaker notes. Same information, one-third the words.

Pass 3 — Hook: most decks open with title-then-agenda, signalling "the next 30 minutes will be predictable." Add or sharpen a hook slide immediately after the title — surprising statistic, provocative question, bold claim, story setup. Add hooks at section transitions too, because attention naturally dips at transitions and a hook counters this. Pass 4 — Consistency: parallel structure within bullet lists (all verbs or all nouns, not mixed), uniform capitalisation, consistent punctuation, consistent tense within sections, one number format throughout (30% OR 30 percent, not both). Pass 5 — Kill: for every slide, ask if deleting it would lose anything essential. Agenda slides go. "Any questions?" slides go. Bio slides go. Repeat-the-previous-point slides go.

Self-contained decks (sent without a presenter) get adapted thresholds because the slides have to stand alone. Bullets can go to 12 words, 4-5 per slide instead of 3, full sentences allowed for chart annotations. The Hook Pass still applies — async decks lose readers by slide 3 without one. The Kill Pass gets applied more conservatively, with section summaries added rather than cut. Target reduction is 20-35% instead of 40-60%. Data-heavy decks get a parallel treatment: chart labels become insight assertions ("Q3 Revenue" → "Q3 revenue hit £4.2M — our best quarter ever"), so the audience understands the takeaway from the headline alone even if they never look at the chart.

The output structure is fixed. Every slide gets original title vs revised title, original body vs revised body, specific changes with reasoning, structured speaker notes (key point, talking points, transition, data to cite — not paragraph dumps), and a verdict: keep, merge with slide X, or delete. The overall deliverable adds a deck assessment of what's working not just what's failing, a before/after side-by-side of the three most dramatically improved slides, a deck flow review confirming the narrative still works in sequence, and a word count comparison. Constraints get respected — if the user locks titles, the skill still provides assertion alternatives in an "optional upgrades" section and quantifies the trade-off honestly (the deck improves ~25% with locked titles, ~45% with assertion headlines).