The house style for anything a person reads. Plain words. Plain sentences. No trying to sound smart.
This skill is prose only. It has no tools and no platforms in it. For posting to social channels, use the social-media-posting skill, which points back here for the writing rules.
When to use
Any prose a human will read. An email, a message, a README, a doc, a commit body, a post, an announcement, a chat reply.
Also use it as a diagnostic. If a draft reads wrong and you cannot say why, run the self-check gate at the bottom.
What this prevents
- Wrong tone. Corporate-speak, hype, robotic phrasing.
- Showing off. Big words picked to sound clever.
- No reader. Writing to everyone, which reaches nobody.
- Borrowed context. Referring to a history the reader does not have.
- AI tells. The patterns that make text read as machine-written.
Step 1. Name the reader and the one point
Before writing, answer two questions.
Who is this for? One sentence: "I am writing for [a specific person] who [cares about this] and [is deciding or feeling this]." Speak to that one person. If you cannot picture them, the writing will be generic, and generic writing lands on nobody.
What is the one point? If there are two points, that is two pieces of writing. Split it.
Step 2. Draft
- Use the simplest word that says what you mean. If there is a short everyday word, use it. Never pick a big word to sound smart.
- Short sentences. First person. Contractions. Write as the person, not the brand. Always capitalize "I", never lowercase "i". If you would not say it out loud, do not write it.
- One point. Say it, support it, stop.
- Specifics beat adjectives. "Pages took 900ms, now they take 40ms" beats "much faster". Real numbers and details are what make writing credible.
- Write only from shared context. Use only what the reader can see: their own words, your own facts about yourself, and public facts you attribute. Never refer to something they did not say, never present your own research as agreed ground, and never write a reply to an objection nobody raised. The five giveaways and the test are in
references/tone.md. - Get the opening right. The first line decides whether anyone reads the second. Use a specific fact, a true claim, a question that opens a gap, a small confession, or a number. No throat-clearing. Attention is the bottleneck, so spend it well.
- Strip the AI tells. Read the draft and remove every one. The full list is in
references/tone.md. - Playfulness, dosed, if it fits. Humour comes from the situation, never from clever wording. Only ever make fun of yourself. One playful beat at most. Rules in
references/playfulness.md.
Step 3. Self-check gate
Read the draft and check every line.
- Tone: Would a real person say this out loud? Simple everyday words, no big words used to sound smart? No corporate-speak, no hype, no filler?
- Opening: Does the first line make the reader want the second? If it is generic, rewrite it.
- One point: Does it try to do two things? If so, split it.
- Reader: Read it back as the imagined reader. Would they care? If it is about you with no reason for them to care, add the reason.
- Specifics: Are the claims concrete? Replace adjectives with numbers or details.
- Shared context: List every claim the draft makes about the past. Did the reader say it, or did you bring it from your own research or a chat they were not in? Cut anything they cannot see. Watch for "rather than", "instead of", "as we discussed", "as I mentioned", "a lot of you asked".
- AI tells: Any significance inflation, negative parallelism, rule of three, decorative emoji, em dash, or filler phrase? Remove it.
- Dashes: No em dashes or en dashes as punctuation. Use a semicolon, period, or comma.
- Length: As short as it can be while keeping everything needed. Cut, do not cram.
References
references/tone.mdis the full voice card, the do and do not lists, the AI-writing tells, the shared-context rule with its five patterns, and five before and after pairs.references/psychology.mdis the research behind the rules. Read it when a draft feels wrong and you want to diagnose why.references/playfulness.mdis the humour rules. Read it before writing anything playful.