Tips on improving social skills?

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Does anyone have tips on improving social skills? (Mine are not that great, so I want to try to improve them.)

Aspie or no, I find social skills to be a largely mythical phenomenon. IMO it's really about hugs/time.

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-Georges Lemaitre
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-Gem Tos

I found it helpful to read books and articles about basic human body language including facial expressions. Really basic stuff like what folded arms or open postures tend to signal, and what various facial expressions signal.

Learning to read basic signals in a person's face and body can help greatly with social interactions, though it's still not the whole story.

Years ago I went through a phase of this almost being my special interest as I was intensely interested in learning this stuff, and I think it went a long way to my being not as bad at reading people as I might have been.

You might also pre-prepare certain small pieces of what I think of as scripts to say in reaction to certain things. If you think about some of the usual things people say in conversation or when meeting a new person, you can plan out some of your responses in advance and rehearse them.

I find myself very easily caught off guard and stumbling over a response that I do know the "answer" to, yet have never really formulated inside my head the right way to say that out loud to someone who is asking or commenting. I'm bad at "thinking on my feet" even though it's something I know inside my head. So I often have to rehearse at home alone things I might need to say, ahead of time.

It still doesn't solve the problem of everything someone might surprise you with in a conversation, but it helps with some things you might be able to expect to talk about or answer.