Achhina's Digital Garden

Writing Conventions Rollout

3 min read

Objective

Formalize one set of writing conventions (tone, format, rules) that applies to everything I write or have written for me, then wire it in so it’s applied every time without having to remember it. Done when the rules are captured in Writing Conventions, each medium has its hooks in place, and a few weeks of drafts come back needing no tone edits.

Context

Writing lands in a lot of places: Obsidian notes, email, Google Docs, Slack, personal notes, and output from AI agents back to me. The same corrections keep coming up (em dashes, formal or AI-sounding prose, too long, structure where prose would do). So far the only place they were written down was Professional Email Tone, which mixes general rules with email-specific ones. The general rules were pulled into Writing Conventions on 2026-09-06 but that note is a first pass, not the full set.

Approach

  1. Collect the rules. Go through past edits (email edit log, journal entries, vault notes I’ve rewritten) and pull out anything general.
  2. Decide the format rules per medium: headers, bullets, tables, code blocks, length, when each is allowed.
  3. Wire in the hooks so the conventions get read automatically:
    • Vault: pointer in README.md conventions so the knowledge-management skill reads Writing Conventions for every note.
    • Email: Professional Email Tone links to Writing Conventions and keeps only the email-specific rules.
    • AI output: Claude memory preferences and any CLAUDE.md or agent system prompts point to the same rules.
    • Google Docs and Slack: no automation available; keep the rules short enough to hold in your head.
  4. Run it for a few weeks and log every correction in the edit log. Promote repeated corrections to rules.

Next Actions

  • Review Professional Email Tone and move anything general into Writing Conventions, leave email-only rules behind
  • Add format rules (when headers, bullets, tables, code blocks are allowed; default length per medium)
  • Decide on a rule for en dashes and hyphens in ranges, since the em dash rule leaves that open
  • Add a pointer to Writing Conventions in the vault README.md conventions section
  • Add a link from Professional Email Tone back to Writing Conventions
  • Check Claude memory preferences and any CLAUDE.md files carry the same rules
  • Rewrite the Common Cold reference as the first note held to the full conventions, and note anything it surfaces

Resources

Notes

Keep Writing Conventions low cost. If it grows past a screen it stops getting read. Medium-specific detail goes in the medium’s note.

Decisions

2026-09-06 - General rules live in a reference, not in this project note

Status: decided Context: The rules need to be read by tools and by me every time, and referenced from other notes. Decision: Writing Conventions in Atlas/References/ holds the rules. This project note tracks the work to build and wire them in, and closes when that’s done. Alternatives considered: Keeping everything in Professional Email Tone and renaming it; putting the rules in this project note. Rationale: References are durable and linkable; projects finish. Mixing the two means the rules disappear from view when the project closes.

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