Writing Conventions

Living set of writing conventions that apply everywhere: vault notes, email, Google Docs, Slack, personal notes, and output from AI agents back to me. Medium-specific rules live in their own notes and link back here. Keep this short; if a rule only applies to one medium, it goes in that medium’s note.

Rules

1. No em dashes. Use a comma, a colon, or split the sentence. Em dashes read as disconnected thoughts.
2. Natural over formal. Conversational prose, nothing stiff, templated, or AI-sounding. Write like a person talking to a person.
3. Shorter wins. Sent drafts tend to be about 40% shorter than the first pass with the same content. Cut preamble, restated points, and hedging.
4. Lead with the point. First sentence carries the answer or the ask. Context comes after, if at all.
5. Don’t recite the reader’s own material back to them. They know what they wrote.
6. Don’t manage how they respond. No “a one-line reply is fine” or interpreting their policies for them. Describe what’s wanted and let them apply their own rules.
7. Every word should add something. No filler, no cliche phrases, no throat-clearing.

Defaults

See Prefer X over Y: the default is what you do unless there’s a reason, and the reason gets stated in one line.

• Prefer saying it once over stacking justification. One ask, one claim, no restating it in different words. Stack reasons only when the reader has to weigh them, and say so.
• Prefer plain prose over headers, bullets, and tables. Structure earns its place when the content is multifaceted enough that it helps a reader scan. Anything else is formatting for its own sake.
• Prefer linking over naming. Products, tools, docs, places: include the URL. Leave it out when the link adds nothing the reader doesn’t already have.

By medium

• Email: Professional Email Tone holds the email-specific rules and the edit log.
• Vault notes: vault README.md conventions govern structure (note types, frontmatter, tags). These rules govern the prose inside.
• Slack: rule 3 and 4 dominate. One message, point first, no headers.
• Google Docs: same as vault notes for prose; formatting only where a reader needs to scan.
• AI agent output to me: rules 1, 3, 4, and the plain-prose default. Short by default, expand only when asked. Too much information reads as saying a lot without saying much.
• Visual output: these rules cover the prose in it. Visual Conventions covers the rest.

Learnings

Corrections and confirmations from drafting sessions go in Writing (Chronicles/Learnings/Writing.md), not here. That file also holds this doc’s changelog. See 0020-conventions-and-learnings-two-type-capture.