Tom's writing checks

Original wording

Guidance

Restructure with a colon, semicolon, comma, or participial phrase. The em dash gives prose an ad-copy cadence Tom never uses.

Examples

• the result—a clean break—held

Original wording

Guidance

Lead with the positive claim. Delete the negated clause and read what remains; if the positive statement stands on its own, keep only that.

Legitimate uses

A single genuine correction of a real misconception can be legitimate. Flagging is still correct; the agent keeps it only when the negated belief is one a reader actually holds.

Examples

• not just a tool, but a way of thinking
• it's not about speed, it's about depth

Original wording

Guidance

The semicolon variant of contrastive negation ("X does not Y; it Z", "is not A; it is B") is the form that most often slips past a fast read, so grep for "not ...; it " after any rewrite (the applicable writing criterion no-contrastive-negation). Restructure the grammar: lead with the positive claim, lay out the competing territories so the reader feels the gap, or give a concrete illustration. Cut the negation entirely when the reader was never going to hold the wrong belief.

Legitimate uses

The banned thing is the grammatical template, not the act of correcting a genuine misconception (the applicable writing criterion). When the reader truly holds a wrong belief, a "common belief X; the truth is Y" correction is allowed once the grammar has been restructured. Flagging is still correct; keep it only when the negated belief is one a reader actually holds, and prefer leading with the positive claim. A quoted source or a [cite:...] attribution is exempt and does not fire.

Examples

• The map does not store the route; it stores the rule.
• Mass is not intensive; it is extensive.

Original wording

Guidance

Abstraction is epistemically essential: it is a real pattern expressible in many concrete ways. Describe what the abstraction IS and does. Use "pair the concept with a concrete example", never "make the abstract concrete".

Examples

• not just abstract theory
• we make the abstract concept concrete

Original wording

Guidance

Name the work the idea does: it distinguishes, protects, reveals, limits, connects, prevents, or makes something visible. State that directly.

Original wording

Guidance

Do not caption importance. State the consequence, constraint, distinction, or mechanism that makes it weigh.

Examples

• The symmetry is exact, and that matters.

Original wording

Guidance

State the reason in the same sentence. Do not make the reader wait for it.

Original wording

Guidance

State the same definition or capability while preserving its qualifications and explanatory purpose. "The report is a record you can review after the run" becomes "The report remains available for review after the run." Adding a command changes this statement into an instruction and is not a faithful wording repair. Apply the applicable writing criterion

Legitimate uses

Fires only on a definition padded with the reader's capability ("X is Y you can verb"). Plain uses of "you can" belong to the you-can watchlist rule.

Examples

• Your voice is a set of claims you can inspect
• The report is a record you can review after the run

Original wording

Guidance

Explain the intended choice and the evidence that finishes the task. Read the surrounding passage to decide whether it asks for priority, a manageable trial, coverage, comparison, or a finished result. For priority, choose the useful task that is feasible now; for a trial, use a representative case that can expose a failure; for a summary, include what changes the reader's decision. "Choose one thing and make it work" might become "Choose the recurring task that costs you the most time and test the automation on your next real request" when that is the intended lesson. Do not replace one with a/an, swap digits for words, substitute a fixed synonym, or invent a selection criterion. Rewrite the complete thought and preserve supported meaning.

Legitimate uses

Keep quantities that carry facts or necessary constraints: mathematics, dates, versions, measured totals, a stated schema or format, per-item allocation, capacity, batching, an explicit comparison, or a demonstrated test design. Ordinary idioms, factual enumerations, and quoted source text stay. A numbered list alone does not justify imposing its length. Repeated arbitrary quotas and fixed recipe counts need semantic review even when the catcher finds no match.

Examples

• Find one way to improve your workflow
• Choose ONE thing and make it work
• Do the one thing
• Start with one small action

Background

Original wording

Guidance

The whole financial family is banned for describing intellectual or pedagogical value, not just "buys you": paying rent, payoff, repays the effort, pays dividends, price of admission, the currency of X, cashing in, getting a result for free, a property that earns its name, and a lesson, test, or answer that "pays" points or XP. State the concrete capability or consequence instead; for points, say what gives them ("Full tests pay XP for the habits that raise your score" becomes "Full tests give XP for the habits that raise your score"; "a wrong answer never pays" becomes "a wrong answer gets no XP"). "They keep paying rent" becomes "they have kept solving new problems in every century since"; "the payoff is leverage: prove one theorem and every system inherits it" becomes "a theorem proved once about the pattern holds in every system wearing that pattern"; "you get the second theorem for free" becomes "the second theorem follows at once". Hard ban in all authored prose , including pays off, earns its place/keep, spend attention, and cognitive budget or tax. Ordinary idioms of effort are not in the family: investing or spending time, energy, or effort is common usage and stays . Added after "keeps paying rent" and "the payoff is leverage" shipped in lesson prose that only the narrower buys-payoff regex was guarding. Sibling and generalization of buys-payoff, which keeps its own rule.

Legitimate uses

Literal money stays: a tenant paying rent, a fund paying dividends, a museum's price of admission, a free download or free tier, cashing in a bond, wages earned, a one-time purchase ("you pay once"). Earning points or XP is the game's own verb and stays; only "pay" is flagged for points. Terms of art stay: payoff matrix, payoff function, payoff table in game theory (excluded by the pattern). Mathematical examples that are literally about money (bank deposits and withdrawals as integers) stay.

Examples

• groups keep paying rent
• the payoff is leverage
• this subject repays the effort
• abstraction pays dividends later
• counting one hands you the other for free
• full tests pay XP for the habits that raise your score
• a wrong answer never pays

Original wording

Guidance

In growth claims, use compounding only for actual exponential growth: successive gains proportional to the accumulated amount. Feedback, recursion, reuse, persistence, and improvements that help later improvements do not establish it. Say what happens: the setup improves over time, saved checks catch more errors, or the assistant handles more tasks. Do not invent a rate or add growth jargon to justify the word. Rewrite the whole thought as finished prose without mentioning the previous wording.

Legitimate uses

Keep literal technical uses such as compound interest, chemical compound, compound sentence, compound fracture, and compound microscope. Other growth uses require semantic review and evidence of actual exponential growth, with successive gains proportional to the accumulated amount. A number or the words exponential, multiplicative, recursive, or reinvested are not evidence by themselves. A disclaimer about an irregular rate does not excuse an unsupported growth claim.

Examples

• They turn every AI interaction into a compounding improvement
• A compounding loop improves the means of making later improvements
• The gains compound because each improvement becomes part of the base for the next improvement

Original wording

Guidance

Name the actual force or consequence. "The rule has teeth" becomes "Violating the rule voids the warranty."

Legitimate uses

Literal anatomy ("sharks have teeth arranged in rows") is fine; the clause-end match targets the idiom.

Examples

• the constraint finally has teeth

Background

Original wording

Guidance

Say what the reader gets, what happens, what the control does, or what to check. "Watch your agent secure your computer, step by step" became "Choose what your agent secures and get a live report of each check"; "See all 12 steps" becomes "Show all 12 steps"; "See why access makes the help specific" states the reason. Trading one perception verb for another (watch, read, view, look at, observe) keeps the defect. Tom named read, watch, and see together as banned vague verbs on 2026-10-29.

Legitimate uses

Literal uses stay: a person, assistant, or app that can see or read something (data access); playing a video or recording; reading a book or article as the activity; an instruction to an AI agent to read a source; read X as Y interpretation (Tom approved "You can read a matrix as a map", 2026-10-05); a lowercase citation or See also cross-reference in agent-facing guidance; Watch out as a warning; and Tom's own wording, which stays verbatim.

Examples

• Watch your agent secure your computer, step by step
• See each AI term drawn, with an example from everyday work
• Copy the prompt, then watch each check update here.
• Read more

Original wording

Guidance

Write the exact action, structure, observation, criterion, or saved instruction. Use a concrete verb with its object and result: "the next move" becomes "compare both drafts"; "the lines that shape the reply" becomes "the lines the reply must reflect"; "progress signals" becomes "course activity, saved items, and test-outs"; "output shape" becomes "required sections and fields". A cold reader should not have to infer what changes, what evidence was observed, or which instruction applies.

Legitimate uses

Keep literal or defined uses: a chess move; moving a file to a named folder; a geometric shape; a data schema whose fields are stated; an electrical, acoustic, statistical, or model-internal signal; a named mathematical rule or transformation (the chain rule, the distributive rule, a rotation by 90 degrees); and a named saved rule whose trigger and required behavior are stated. A function, map, update, or recurrence that a passage calls "the rule" is not a defined use: `rule-for-function` covers that case. A numbered set can stay when the passage immediately enumerates a genuinely closed set and names every item. The match nominates a contextual review; it is not permission for blind replacement.

Examples

• use the same four moves in both apps
• the lines that shape the reply
• what is your next move
• the next site learning signal

Original wording

Guidance

A count and a vague noun stand where the section's idea should be: the reader learns only how many. Write the heading or label that says what the reader does with which idea, or names the exact subject, in the form its own section calls for, and read it beside its neighbors so the rewritten set does not share one construction : "Four jobs" becomes "Hand the assistant drafting, sorting, searching, and scheduling"; "Two moves" becomes the two actions themselves. Never swap the count for an article or another vague noun ("Choosing One Moment" to "Choosing a Moment" stays as vague). See `the applicable writing criterion`.

Legitimate uses

Keep a count that carries a fact the reader needs: a measured quantity or duration ("Ten minutes a day"), a recipe amount, a math answer choice, a navigation label ("Step 1 of 5"), a title of a real work, or a heading that opens a claim ("One of the hardest problems ..."). Quoted source text stays as printed.

Examples

• ## Two moves
• Four jobs
• **Two steps:**
• One proposal and four checks

Original wording

Guidance

Replace stock threshold language with the exact mechanism, consequence, or step the learner takes in the passage.

Legitimate uses

Literal locks and keys stay ("the key is under the mat", "the badge unlocks the lab door"), as does a product mechanic whose result is stated ("finishing level 3 opens level 4" is still clearer than "unlocks").

Original wording

Guidance

Banned in every judgment sense . "Worth keeping", "worth testing", "worth it", "worth revisiting", "worthwhile", and "it's worth noting" borrow a money word to say something is good without saying what it does. State the concrete result, reason, or condition: "a prompt worth saving" becomes "a prompt you will run again next week"; "two flavors worth telling apart" becomes "the two cases call for different tests". A synonym swap (valuable, deserves, merits, rewarding) keeps the empty judgment and fails. Sibling of financial-metaphor.

Legitimate uses

Literal money stays: a price or amount ("$20 worth of credits"), net worth, an asset's market value, and explicit economics. Quotations and cited titles stay. Every other use is a hit; a scoped authorial judgment is not an exemption.

Examples

• two flavors worth telling apart
• This decomposition is worth doing.
• a prompt worth saving
• Is the setup worth it?
• a worthwhile experiment

Original wording

Guidance

In any definition, tooltip, glossary entry, marginalia callout, or concept annotation, the FIRST sentence must state what the term means in plain language. Scenarios, examples, analogies, and 'You want...' openers come AFTER the definition. Rewrite so the plain-language definition leads, then add the scenario.

Legitimate uses

Only treat as a hard ban inside definition/tooltip/glossary/callout contexts. In ordinary narrative prose a scenario opener is a legitimate hook, not a backwards definition. Do not fire when the same sentence both opens with a scenario AND the definition is genuinely absent (that needs the definition added, but downgrade to a fixer note outside definition surfaces). The catcher only fires when the scenario opener is immediately followed by a definition-like sentence.

Examples

• You want your assistant to handle morning briefings. That capability is one module. A module is...
• Imagine a system that settles into a repeating state. That is an attractor.

Original wording

Guidance

Repeated negation hinges ("not X", "not merely", "more than just", "rather than") make prose think only by opposing abstractions. Name the actual force.

Legitimate uses

One isolated necessary negation is fine. The cluster detector fires only when the frame recurs.

Original wording

Guidance

"You can" is fine when it tells the reader something they really can do ("You can read a matrix as a map"). Rewrite only reflex use: the same capability frame across neighboring sentences, a promised capability where the text should say what happens, or a definition padded with the reader's capability. Write each sentence from its own idea so the syntax varies; do not swap in another stock frame such as "lets you" or a command.

Legitimate uses

A single "you can" stating a real option the reader has is acceptable. Negative forms such as cannot, can't, can not, can never, and can no longer express a limit and are different constructions. Preserve verbatim quotations and executable code.

Examples

• You can inspect each claim. You can compare the sources. You can save the result.
• Save a record so you can compare the results

Original wording

Guidance

Set the name off with quotation marks or bold (the applicable writing criterion): a check called the “because” test, a form called the “singular possessive.” Keep a coined name marked on every later use too; this catcher only sees the introduction, so search the file for the bare name.

Legitimate uses

Other senses of the verb stay: called for, called the police, called the new plan a bargain, a cat named Pip. Names inside quoted source text or test passages stay as printed. A name already set off with bold markup (<strong>, **) or code formatting passes even though the pattern sees a letter after the article.

Examples

• A check called the because test uses that difference
• a form called the singular possessive
• Using only the results that fit a claim is called cherry-picking.

Original wording

Guidance

Explain the intended choice and the evidence that finishes the task. Read the surrounding passage to decide whether it asks for priority, a manageable trial, coverage, comparison, or a finished result. For priority, choose the useful task that is feasible now; for a trial, use a representative case that can expose a failure; for a summary, include what changes the reader's decision. "Choose one thing and make it work" might become "Choose the recurring task that costs you the most time and test the automation on your next real request" when that is the intended lesson. Do not replace one with a/an, swap digits for words, substitute a fixed synonym, or invent a selection criterion. Rewrite the complete thought and preserve supported meaning.

Legitimate uses

Keep quantities that carry facts or necessary constraints: mathematics, dates, versions, measured totals, a stated schema or format, per-item allocation, capacity, batching, an explicit comparison, or a demonstrated test design. Ordinary idioms, factual enumerations, and quoted source text stay. A numbered list alone does not justify imposing its length. Repeated arbitrary quotas and fixed recipe counts need semantic review even when the catcher finds no match.

Examples

• Write three takeaways from the meeting
• Draft 12 ideas for the launch
• List twenty-five lessons from the trial

Original wording

Guidance

Name what actually becomes available. "The Jacobian buys you the easy version" becomes "For continuous-time dynamics near a fixed point, the Jacobian describes how a small displacement changes the velocity."

Legitimate uses

Literal commerce ("buys a house", "purchased the dataset license") is fine. Fires on the figurative payoff sense.

Examples

• the Jacobian buys you the easy version
• that buys us a closed-form solution

Original wording

Guidance

Write the corrected claim as finished prose. Delete commentary about what an earlier draft said, what the text used to call something, or which wording the editor replaced. The reader needs the subject, not the revision history.

Legitimate uses

Editing instructions, redlines, changelogs, textual scholarship, and explicit comparisons of historical document versions may need revision history. The defect is residue inside finished reader-facing prose that should read as if the corrected claim had always been there. Preserve accurate quotations and source discussions.

Examples

• The previous version called this compounding
• Rather than calling these gains compounding, think of them as cumulative
• This used to say that every interaction compounds

Original wording

Guidance

Drop the hedge and state the caveat. "One honest caveat: the model ignores migration" becomes "The model ignores migration, so it overstates local extinction."

Legitimate uses

Prose genuinely about honesty as a subject (ethics, testimony, an honest day's work) is legitimate.

Examples

• One honest caveat:
• to be honest, the estimate is rough

Original wording

Guidance

Name the mechanism. "The exponent is doing all the work" becomes "The exponent sets how fast error grows, so it alone decides whether the trajectory diverges."

Examples

• the normalization term is doing all the work
• the prior does the heavy lifting

Original wording

Guidance

honest/real/true/genuine as emphasis asserts importance instead of showing it; the word adds nothing. State the property or mechanism directly. "the AND gate is the honest middle" becomes "the AND gate sits in the middle, mixing redundancy and synergy". "the real magic is X" becomes naming X. Keep the word only when it is load-bearing.

Legitimate uses

Technical terms keep the word: real numbers/analysis/part/line/-valued/-time/-world, true positive/negative/value/mean/north, truth value. "honest" about real honesty (testimony, an honest day's work) stays. A "real"/"true" that contrasts with a specific stated illusion the reader holds can stay; empty emphasis before a framing noun does not.

Examples

• the AND gate is the honest middle
• that is where the real magic happens
• the truly remarkable part is the symmetry

Original wording

Guidance

The synergetics and singular-perturbation term "slave/slaved/slaving" is opaque and off-putting to a beginner. Replace it with plain language for what happens: the fast variable is eliminated, settles to a value the slow variable fixes, follows the slow variable, or is set by it. Gloss the term of art at most once in a parenthetical, and never lead with it. This is the catchable instance of the broader plain-language-first standard: define or replace specialist jargon at first use.

Legitimate uses

Prose about actual slavery (history, ethics, abolition, forced labor) is legitimate and must never be rewritten.

Examples

• you may slave the fast variable
• the complex is slaved to the substrate
• Tikhonov's slaving theorem

Original wording

Guidance

Check whether the surrounding explanation identifies the change, relationship and relevant conditions. “Practice turns concepts into capabilities” promises a result without explaining the practice or usable capacity. Describe what learners do and what that prepares them to do. Literal physical causation, a defined mathematical transformation and an already explained mechanism can use makes, keeps or turns into accurately. They do not require an invented human actor. Preserve the author's explanatory or instructional purpose; do not turn an explanation into a command or swap the verb merely to clear the match. A short summary can rely on the mechanism established immediately before it.

Legitimate uses

Keep literal physical relationships, defined mathematical transformations, real actors doing specified actions, receive/create senses of get and make, and summaries whose mechanism is already available. A mechanism can be an explained relationship rather than a person acting. Preserve necessary qualification and authored stance.

Examples

• one short assistant conversation gets the next session ready
• Practice turns concepts into capabilities
• Discovery makes skills usable
• Spaced resurfacing keeps ideas alive

Original wording

Guidance

An imperative-mood command voices a hypothetical or illustrative scenario, not a real instruction, with no setup word to mark it as conditional. "Store one of those in a single tool and every other tool works without it" reads as a direction to store the rule in one tool, when the passage is describing the mistake of doing that. English lets a command stand in for a conditional antecedent ("Do X and Y happens" means "If you do X, Y happens"), so the model states a supposition without writing "If", "Say", "Suppose", or "When", and the reader parses a direction they were never given. Mark the hypothetical with a setup word or recast it as a declarative: "Store one of those in a single tool and every other tool works without it" becomes "If you keep one of those in a single tool, every other tool works without it."

Legitimate uses

Keep the imperative when the reader genuinely is being instructed to do the thing: "Split the job into stages, and each stage gets one focus" and "Give each email type its own skill" are recommended moves the lesson wants the reader to take, so the command is correct. The separator is the sentence's intended function: preserve genuine authored instructions, but do not convert a qualified recommendation or explanation into a command merely because its action might be useful. A genuine two-step instruction that continues with another bare imperative ("Read the path and state which jobs it covers") is not this pattern. A declarative sentence that merely coordinates two clauses ("The rule lives in one tool, and every other assistant works without it") is not an imperative and does not apply.

Examples

• Store one of those in a single tool and every other tool works without it
• Tell one babysitter and nobody else, and the rest of the house walks in with shoes on
• Lock your rules in one app and each tool loses them

Original wording

Guidance

Read the complete task and its context. A direction fails when the learner cannot identify what to inspect, compare, calculate or conclude. Repair that missing object or reasoning, preserving the author's meaning and the distinction the activity needs. “Notice the pattern” might become “Compare the gaps between successive terms; how does each gap change?” when that comparison is the intended task. See, watch, and read are banned as vague verbs , so the repair never trades one perception verb for another, and replacing these words with understand, distinguish or another stock verb does not repair an unclear task either. An explanation may simply state its relationship. A nomination in a title Tom approved is judged in context; he rejected a count-driven rewrite of approved titles on 2026-10-03. Judge the complete encounter under authored-meaning-and-stance.

Legitimate uses

Preserve specific, answerable comparison tasks, literal naming, perception and data access, and Tom's own wording. Established context may supply the object and criterion. The posted-notice noun and tell meaning instruct are ordinary uses. Judge missing meaning or unnecessary repeated framing, not the matched verb alone.

Examples

• Name the assistant that goes and does the heavier work
• See why access is what makes the help specific
• Notice what you pay when you explain the same job every time
• Tell a one-time request apart from a saved skill

Original wording

Guidance

Name the actual object or relationship. A derivative, function, mapping, recurrence, differential equation, constraint, or decision criterion needs its own precise name and meaning. For y' = f(y), the differential equation relates the amount to its rate; f is the rate function, and y' is the derivative. Choose from the mathematics in this passage instead of replacing every occurrence with one stock noun. Use "rule" when a rule is meant. This warning requests contextual judgment, not automatic replacement; explicitly approved unchanged occurrences are retained by the reviewed-warning store.

Legitimate uses

Named rules stay: the chain rule, the product rule, the distributive rule, Cramer's rule, Simpson's rule, an exponent rule written out ("the rule $x^{-n} = 1/x^n$"), a rule of inference, a rule of thumb. So do the rules of a game, a policy, a law, a style guide, or a software configuration, where no function of a value is meant. A constraint a puzzle calls a rule (a unique game's rules) stays when the passage uses that field's own word. The match nominates a contextual review; it is not permission for blind replacement.

Examples

• A dynamical system feeds each value back into one rule
• the value the rule gives back unchanged
• and the rule turns 10 into 15
• Repeating a rule

Original wording

Guidance

In math and science prose, a part of a whole has a precise name: a fraction, a proportion, a probability, or a weight in an average. "Share" leaves the reader to guess which one is meant, and whether it is a number at all. Use the word that names the quantity: "its share of the days" becomes "the fraction of the days in it"; "each cell is its row's share times its column's" becomes "each cell's probability is its row's total times its column's total"; "mixes the rows' bits in the same shares" becomes "averages the rows' bits with the same weights, 3/4 and 1/4". The verb stays: two variables share 0.71 bits, two actors share a co-star.

Legitimate uses

The verb stays: two series share history, neighboring characters share about 0.71 bits, two starts share six decimal places. So do shares of stock and a share in a company, market share and a fair share in writing about business or money, and a screen or file share. The match nominates a contextual review; it is not permission for blind replacement.

Examples

• its share of the days
• That swaps the shares
• a share of deaths
• each cell is its row's share times its column's

Original wording

Guidance

A superlative asserted as bare fact about the science or the exposition ("the cleanest case", "the sharpest controversy", "the strongest argument") claims a ranking the evidence rarely supports, and reads as a headline. State the specific property instead. "the cleanest physical case of a whole that does not come apart" becomes "a physical case of a whole that does not come apart"; "gave the field its cleanest map" becomes "gave the field a clear map". This is science writing, not a YouTube headline.

Legitimate uses

Genuine mathematical terms of art keep the superlative and must not be rewritten: best rank-k approximation, best low-rank approximation, least upper bound, greatest common divisor, shortest path, steepest descent ("best" is intentionally excluded from the pattern for this reason). A standard, defensible descriptor for a named object can stay (the Ising model as the simplest model of a magnet). A superlative the passage explicitly defines and earns over several sentences is borderline; keep it only if the definition does the work.

Examples

• the cleanest demonstration that modularity can evolve
• the sharpest controversy in the field
• Linearity Is the Gold Standard of Decomposability

Original wording

Guidance

A reader who checks an exaggerated magnitude finds a false claim. Verify the magnitude and state it literally. "2^100 is larger than the number of atoms in the universe" (false: 2^100 is about 10^30, atoms about 10^80) becomes "2^100 is about 1.27 × 10^30. At a billion operations per second, that many operations would take about 4 × 10^13 years". Cut "infinitely" unless the quantity is literally unbounded.

Legitimate uses

A literally-true magnitude comparison stays. "infinite" or "infinitely" for a genuinely unbounded mathematical quantity (an infinite series, an infinitely differentiable function) is correct and is not matched by the pattern.

Examples

• larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe
• infinitely harder to compute
• breaks every rule of the model

Original wording

Guidance

A physical thing is described or represented by a mathematical object; it is not one. "the three-photon state is literally an order-3 tensor" becomes "quantum theory describes the three-photon state with an order-3 tensor". The model-property (tensor rank, treewidth) can track a real structural property; keep that claim and fix the identity claim. Do not add philosophy-of-science commentary; correct the verb. See the applicable writing criterion

Legitimate uses

Defining the mathematical object itself is fine and is not matched: "a tensor is a multi-way array of numbers", "a vector is a list of numbers". A representation or role verb (is described by, is represented as, is modeled as, corresponds to, is given by, acts as, plays the role of, measures) is correct and must never be rewritten, including when copula-avoidance flags it. The defect runs both ways: a formal object said to BE a physical quantity or another model's quantity ("the metric's time part is Newton's potential", "the derivative is the viral-load growth rate") fails the same test.

Examples

• the three-photon state is literally an order-3 tensor
• the system is just a graph

Original wording

Guidance

A theory, model, equation, or formal object describes, represents, specifies, determines, fixes, or is given by something; it does not "pin down" a result, which reads as colloquial flourish. "quantum theory pins down a pure state" becomes "quantum theory describes a pure state" or "specifies a pure state".

Legitimate uses

An ordinary idiom that stays clear in flowing prose can be kept, especially with a person or a measurement as the subject: "the number of yes-or-no questions needed to pin down its value". The target is a formal subject (a theory, model, equation, or axis) pinning down a result.

Examples

• quantum theory pins down a pure state
• the third axis pins down the factors

Background

Original wording

Guidance

A verb performing instead of stating: "smuggles in," "unpacks," a formal subject that "knows," "wants," or "tells you," or a mood verb that supplies affect with no mechanism ("snaps into focus," "comes due," "springs to life," "the payoff lands") (the applicable writing criterion, the applicable writing criterion, the applicable writing criterion move 4). Use a plain, accurate verb: rests on, assumes, requires, describes, specifies, determines, fixes. Keep a figurative verb only when it names the actual mechanism, the way a spring "carries the push across." Sibling of trendy-verb-pins-down (which covers "pins down"), has-teeth, buys-payoff, and marketing-verbs in extended-rules.json (unlock, transform, supercharge, etc.); this rule covers only the verbs those rules do not.

Legitimate uses

An ordinary idiom that stays clear in flowing prose is fine, especially with a person as the subject: "the number of questions needed to pin down its value" (the applicable writing criterion). Literal unpacking (a box, an argument list, a suitcase) is fine; the figurative "unpacks the idea" is the target. Literal "comes due" for a bill, loan, or deadline is fine; the figurative "the argument comes due" is the target. "has teeth" and "buys you" stay with their own rules and are not re-flagged here.

Examples

• the proof smuggles in continuity
• the equation knows the answer
• the method wants smooth data
• the whole module snaps into focus
• the opening weigh-in comes due

Background

Original wording

Guidance

Deferring the name or payoff of the concept under discussion, or narrating the teaching move instead of performing it ("tracing that fact is the work of this lesson," "the rest of the course tours that middle ground," "the modules that follow take this up"). Name the concept where you teach it and state its consequence there (the applicable writing criterion deferred-payoff; the applicable writing criterion no-process-narration; the applicable writing criterion moves 1-2). State the content; the structure carries itself.

Legitimate uses

An ordinary forward cross-reference to a genuinely separate topic in another module is allowed and should be rare (the applicable writing criterion). Deferring the name or payoff of the concept being taught right now is the target.

Examples

• the formal names arrive in the next section
• we'll come back to this later
• bear with me
• Take them one at a time.
• tracing that fact is the work of this lesson
• the rest of the course tours that middle ground

Original wording

Guidance

Let the specific fact carry its own weight. Replace the caption with the consequence or distinction. The same caption can close a sentence ("and that step is the part to practice", "they're where the learning happens"): cut the tail, or say what the reader does next.

Legitimate uses

A literal part of a thing stays ("the part to the left of the equals sign"); the pattern needs a verb after "the part to".

Original wording

Guidance

Name the action or comparison the learner can now perform.

Original wording

Guidance

Empty payoff that gestures at importance instead of stating it. Replace with the concrete fact: what the one measurement is enough to determine, what specifically changes, or what the actual central mechanism is. "one thermometer per room tells the whole story" becomes "one thermometer per room is enough, because the desks in a room already match each other".

Original wording

Guidance

A sentence whose only job is to announce that a payoff is coming, then delivers it in the next sentence ("Here is the part that saves you time.", "But here's the catch:", "Here is the payoff of all that setup.", "Here's where it gets interesting."). Delete the announcement and lead with the payoff itself: the time-saving fact, the point, or the result. "Here is the part that saves you time. Working with both is the same skill" becomes "Working with both is mostly the same skill, so learning one teaches you most of the other." Enforced at error severity by the writing-lint rule value-teaser; magic, secret, and trick are excluded because they routinely introduce a concrete artifact ("the secret key", "the magic number").

Original wording

Guidance

When several intros or sections all end with the same "this lesson shows..." template, the repetition reads as machine scaffolding. Vary it, or cut it and let the last concrete sentence carry the promise. Pose the question the piece answers, or state plainly what the reader will be able to do.

Original wording

Guidance

Remove an attention-announcing preface only when it contributes no substantive judgment. Preserve the author's scope, uncertainty, degree, conditions, and explanatory purpose under the applicable writing criterion A qualified judgment of importance is not the same as announcing that a fact should be noted.

Legitimate uses

Keep substantive assessments, qualifications, and intentional emphasis. Words such as usually, may, often, important, and very are not defects by themselves. Do not convert a judgment into an imperative or certainty merely to remove a match.

Original wording

Guidance

Frame a hypothetical with "Suppose," "Say," or "For example" instead of labeling it illustrative. The framing keeps an invented case from reading as a real record without the stiff label.

Examples

• Here is an illustrative case.
• An illustrative response: 'The proposal is due at 10:00.'

Original wording

Guidance

Do not rank representations as generically good or poor when the actual claim is task-scoped. Name the representation, the question it serves, and the structure it reveals or leaves mixed. Avoid implying that separability, linearity, or convenience is the only measure of representation quality.

Legitimate uses

A passage may compare representations after naming the task, metric, and tradeoff. Keep mathematically precise claims such as well-conditioned bases or best rank-k approximation when the criterion is explicit.

Examples

• a good representation makes a problem come apart into independent pieces, while a poor one hides them
• a good basis reveals structure a poor one buried

Original wording

Guidance

Tighten: "in order to" becomes "to"; "due to the fact that" becomes "because"; "at this point in time" becomes "now".

Original wording

Guidance

Earn the weight with a specific fact instead of announcing a revelation.

Original wording

Guidance

Open with the actual situation, not a generic scene-setter.

Original wording

Guidance

Answer the question as a statement. "The result? Chaos." becomes "The result is chaos."

Legitimate uses

A genuine question the passage then explores at length can stay.

Original wording

Guidance

Fix only the puffed-up uses: "serves as a reminder" becomes "reminds", "stands as a testament to" becomes the specific claim, "boasts a" becomes "has". Never turn a role verb into "is" when a model, equation, tensor, variable, or analogy stands in for a physical thing or for a quantity in another model: that rewrite creates model-reality-literal.

Legitimate uses

Keep "acts as", "plays the role of", "serves as", and "functions as" when the subject is a formal object or analogy standing in for something else ("the metric's time part acts as Newton's potential", "pressure acts as a source of gravity"); these are the honest representation verbs.

Original wording

Guidance

Drop the brochure adjective and state the concrete property.

Legitimate uses

"robust" is intentionally excluded: it is a term of art in Tom's content (robust estimator, robustness).

Original wording

Guidance

Trailing participle phrases tack on fake depth. Make the claim a real clause or cut it.

Original wording

Guidance

Name the study, author, or source. If there is none, drop the borrowed authority and make the claim in your own voice.

Legitimate uses

Legitimate when an actual citation follows in the same sentence or as a footnote.

Original wording

Guidance

Cut the servile filler and answer.

Original wording

Guidance

Name the mechanism or effect instead of calling it magic.

Original wording

Guidance

Choose a verb that names the actual movement, exchange, or relation.

Legitimate uses

Literal dancing is fine.

Original wording

Guidance

Read the section and neighboring headings. State the particular insight, selection criterion, consequence, or concrete instruction hidden by the command and vague personal-context tail. Vary the expression with the idea. Synonym swaps and a uniform declarative replacement do not repair repeated syntax. See generic-coaching-imperative in the applicable writing criterion

Legitimate uses

Keep concrete instructions, meaningful ownership, literal spatial directions, and ordered procedures. A heading about an action already specified by its immediate context may be useful. This is a candidate signal, not an authorship test or a ban on commands, prepositions, you, or your. Broader sibling rhythm requires editorial review.

Examples

• Choose a habit from the work in front of you
• Set authority from the action in front of you
• Choose a correction from the failures in your own work

Original wording

Guidance

Headers name the actual concept, mechanism, limitation, or learner decision. State the takeaway.

Original wording

Guidance

Compare the causal claim with its evidence and conditions. Rewrite an overstatement as the supported relationship; do not mechanically add can or may, which cannot rescue an unsupported or vague headline. Keep supported direct claims and definitions.

Legitimate uses

Definitions and tautologies are fine stated absolutely.

Original wording

Guidance

Review the selection against the full paragraph for centrality and standalone meaning using the applicable writing criterion A full sentence is normal emphasis. Correct a secondary or incomplete selection; do not shorten it merely because the detector found a complete sentence.

Legitimate uses

Complete central claims, including full sentences in neighboring paragraphs, are valid. This detector nominates text for semantic review and cannot establish a skimmability failure.

Original wording

Guidance

Drop the emoji. Tom's work copy and headings carry tone through word choice, not pictographs.

Legitimate uses

Content genuinely about emoji, or a user-supplied quote that contains one, is legitimate.

Original wording

Guidance

Mathematical-styled unicode letters and zero-width characters are paste artifacts. Use plain letters and real markdown emphasis.

Original wording

Guidance

Powerful once, monotonous in bulk. Recast as cause, sequence, or pressure; let one image carry it; use a periodic or cumulative sentence. A colon-to-period swap is not variation.

Legitimate uses

Quotes, clock times, and label prefixes (Note:, e.g.:) are not enumerations.

Original wording

Guidance

Vary entries: begin with place, action, condition, image, claim, or consequence.

Original wording

Guidance

Mix short declaratives with cumulative sentences; vary clause order and punctuation rhythm.

Original wording

Guidance

Three or more strings in a set (directions, prompts, hints) end with the same added sentence, such as "Tap each one." A rewrite copied one example's shape onto every string. Drop the tail where the control or its status line already says it, and let each direction say what its own task needs.

Legitimate uses

A genuinely shared instruction that the interface does not show elsewhere may repeat. Judge the set, not the single string.

Background

Original wording

Guidance

Several titles, previews, or short labels in one set are full claims of the same shape ("A search chooses among complete options", "A map shows every option; a route is one search through it"). Tom called it "redundant 'A ___ does ___'" titles. Compare with the approved version: if these headings were rewritten, restore them unless a named defect required the change. On a selected discovery or independent practice task, the heading must not reveal the answer. Explanation and synthesis headings may state their insight. Follow the project's current heading contract, including its conditions for question headings; the October 3 correction does not require every screen to use discovery.

Legitimate uses

Explanatory screens, essays and reference pages may state findings in headings. Judge whether the set serves its ideas with natural variety and whether a task's answer remains available for the learner to work out.

Original wording

Guidance

Give ideas full sentences. Fragments are seasoning, not the meal.

Original wording

Guidance

Read the complete passage and neighboring examples under the applicable writing criterion A cold imperative can replace a definition, observation or assumed situation even once: "Call the hours, turns and shuffles elements" asks the reader to supply the term the explanation should give them. Decide the sentence's purpose and what the reader already knows before revising. A descriptive statement may do the job directly; a hypothetical may need an explicit condition or introduction. Choose from the idea and its context, then read sibling strings for rhythm. Replacing every command with Suppose, Imagine, If you, You can or one declarative formula repeats the problem. This is a contextual warning, with no imperative quota or automatic replacement.

Legitimate uses

Keep genuine instructions for actual tasks, controls, exercises and procedures, including instructions nominated in flowing prose, with the warmth and pacing their purpose needs. The approximate catcher excludes balanced inline quotations, blockquotes, list steps, headings, Markdown table rows and code. A solitary thought-framing invitation such as "Picture a frictionless plane" is not itself a defect; repeated invitations still need whole-set review. A match cannot establish that an instruction is inappropriate, and an empty scan cannot establish that the prose is natural. Preserve the author's qualifications, meaning and degree of obligation.

Examples

• Call the hours, turns and shuffles elements.
• Turn a light on and the circuit closes.
• Load two sealed cargo boxes onto a truck. Weigh each box on its own, add the two numbers, and you have the answer. Now bind two protons and two neutrons into a helium-4 nucleus.
• Take two numbers and line them up. Multiply each pair of digits.

Original wording

Guidance

Introduce a symbol with its meaning when needed: "f(t) gives the room's temperature in degrees Celsius at time t, measured in minutes" or "N(i) lists the nodes linked to node i". A parenthetical name alone does not explain inputs, outputs or units. Later shorthand can use established meaning within the same passage; an independently entered screen supplies a brief reminder where needed.

Original wording

Guidance

Tom's live checker flags every 'everyone' as cognitive projection. Avoid universal claims about what everyone thinks/wants/does; name the specific group or person. 'Everyone knows the model is overconfident' becomes 'Reviewers on the last three PRs flagged the model's overconfidence.'

Legitimate uses

Keep when 'everyone' is literally and provably true and specific ('everyone on the four-person team signed off'). Recall-first; the fixer dismisses provable universals. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Everyone knows the model is overconfident.
• Everyone wants the same thing.

Original wording

Guidance

Boilerplate challenge/future sections that gesture at complexity without supplying it. Replace with specific events or facts ('Traffic congestion increased after 2015 when three IT parks opened').

Legitimate uses

Keep a genuine challenges section that names specific, concrete obstacles with evidence. The tell is template framing with no specifics. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Despite its strengths, the system faces several challenges.
• Challenges and Future Prospects

Original wording

Guidance

In gratitude/meditation scripts, never instruct the listener to feel a prescribed emotion. Guide the seeing and let feeling arise. 'Allow deep gratitude to fill your chest' becomes a specific thing to notice. Project-scoped.

Legitimate uses

Scope to the author's meditation work scripts. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Allow deep gratitude to fill your chest.
• Feel grateful now for the many hands that made this.

Original wording

Guidance

Elevating the subject by denigrating vague alternatives ('most people', 'traditional approaches', 'theory'). Say what the thing IS and let the reader draw the conclusion; never tell the reader everyone else is worse. This is the zero-sum framing Tom's win-win value rejects.

Legitimate uses

Keep a specific, sourced comparison against a NAMED alternative with real evidence (e.g. 'unlike the 2019 protocol, which dropped packets above 1Gbps'). The tell is vague unnamed inferiors, not a concrete benchmarked comparison.

Examples

• something most experts never build: processes pulled from actual work, not theory
• Unlike most platforms, this isn't just another framework.

Original wording

Guidance

Use straight quotes, not curly/smart quotes (a ChatGPT tell). Normalize “ ” ‘ ’ to " and '.

Legitimate uses

Keep when a project's house style deliberately requires typographic quotes (some published-prose pipelines do). Skip code blocks and quotations of sources that use them meaningfully.

Examples

• He said “hello” to her.
• It’s a test.

Original wording

Guidance

Strip corporate buzzwords. 'As per our discussion' becomes 'As the recipient mentioned'; drop 'please don't hesitate' and let the warm close stand. Email-scoped but the jargon ban generalizes.

Legitimate uses

Keep 'bandwidth' in literal network/signal contexts, 'streamline' where it names a specific process change, 'deep dive' in casual register if Tom uses it. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Let's circle back and touch base to move the needle.
• Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Original wording

Guidance

In client email, do not frame a conversation as Tom giving value or showing what he can do. Reframe as collaborative: learn about their goals, establish mutual fit, map a plan. Email-scoped.

Legitimate uses

Scope to AI-consulting client email. Keep literal value discussions in pricing/contract contexts where value delivered is the explicit topic. Skip quotations.

Examples

• I'd love to show you the value I can provide for your business.
• Here is what I can do for you.

Original wording

Guidance

Presenting multiple perspectives even when unnecessary creates wishy-washy text. Make the claim the evidence supports. Critical objectivism: engage with what is actually true rather than performing balance.

Legitimate uses

Keep genuine two-sided analysis where both sides have real evidence and the piece's job is to weigh them. Keep 'on the other hand' introducing a substantive counter-consideration. Skip quotations.

Examples

• On the other hand, while some argue X, others contend Y, and the debate continues.
• The truth likely lies somewhere in between, and only time will tell.

Original wording

Guidance

Stacked qualifiers that drain commitment. Collapse to a single calibrated modal. 'It could potentially possibly be argued that the policy might have some effect' becomes 'The policy may affect outcomes.'

Legitimate uses

Keep a single appropriate hedge on a genuinely uncertain empirical claim (Tom hedges contingent causal claims on purpose). The tell is STACKED qualifiers, not one honest modal. Skip quotations.

Examples

• It could potentially possibly be argued that the policy might have some effect.
• This might potentially help.

Original wording

Guidance

Do not narrate the structure of an exercise or that a lab is 'designed to teach'. Run the exercise directly; show the mechanism. The reader follows the steps, not a description of the format.

Legitimate uses

Keep brief setup that genuinely orients the learner to a concrete task. Skip quotations.

Examples

• This exercise works by having you pause at each step.
• The lab below is designed to teach feedback.

Original wording

Guidance

Use these words only when the claim is factually/materially true, never as rhetorical emphasis. Replace figurative uses with the accurate verb (quoted, echoed, mirrored, carried, embedded, appears within, registers as). 'The proof literally tears the continuum apart' becomes 'The proof splits the continuum into two cardinalities.'

Legitimate uses

Keep when the claim IS literally/physically/actually true ('the bridge literally collapsed', 'the value is actually 42, not 41', 'the heat physically deforms the rail'). This guard is essential: the word is correct far more often than not. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Her discovery literally changed everything.
• The argument physically dismantles the objection.

Original wording

Guidance

'From X to Y' where X and Y are not on a meaningful scale. Replace with a plain list of what is covered. 'Everything from philosophy to breakfast cereal' becomes a direct list.

Legitimate uses

Keep genuine ranges on a real scale: numeric ('from 0 to 100'), temporal ('from 1990 to 2020'), spatial ('from the coast to the ridge'), and ordered scales ('from novice to expert'). Only the unscaled rhetorical 'from X to Y' is the tell. High recall; fixer dismisses scaled ranges. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Everything from philosophy to breakfast cereal.
• from the Big Bang to dark matter, from stars to the cosmic web

Original wording

Guidance

In deep-POV fiction, remove the filter verb and jump straight to what is perceived/thought. 'I see the sunlight bouncing off the bar top' becomes 'Sunlight bounces off the bar top, too bright, like it's interrogating me.' Fiction-scoped.

Legitimate uses

Scope to immersive fiction only; do not fire in technical, expository, email, or news prose where 'I think' / 'we saw' are legitimate. Keep when perception itself is the explicit subject. Skip quotations.

Examples

• I see the sunlight bouncing off the bar top.
• She felt the cold creep into her hands.

Original wording

Guidance

Delete and rewrite directly with the concrete claim. These phrases announce significance or comprehensiveness while saying nothing checkable.

Legitimate uses

Keep 'paradigm shift' only when directly quoting or discussing Kuhn. Keep 'tapestry' for a literal woven textile. Skip quotations.

Examples

• In today's world, the landscape of AI is a multifaceted, rich tapestry; it cannot be overstated that this is a game-changer.
• This serves as a reminder of the broader trend.

Original wording

Guidance

Vague upbeat endings. Replace with a concrete next fact or plan. 'The future looks bright' becomes 'The company plans to open two more locations next year.'

Legitimate uses

Skip quotations and anti-example blocks. Low false-positive risk.

Examples

• The future looks bright. Exciting times lie ahead.
• This is a step in the right direction.

Original wording

Guidance

Do not skip heading levels (jumping from H1/H2 straight to H3). Human writers rarely skip levels. Insert the intervening level or promote the heading.

Legitimate uses

Keep when a documented component/MDX convention legitimately starts sections at a fixed level. Skip code blocks. Requires scanning heading sequence, so implement as a structural pass.

Examples

• # Title then ### Subsection with no ## between

Original wording

Guidance

List items that start with a bolded header + colon and then restate the header in a sentence. Convert to flowing prose where it reads better, or strip the redundant restatement.

Legitimate uses

Keep genuine definition lists, glossaries, API parameter docs, and changelog entries where the bold lead-in is a real label and the following text is not a restatement. Skip quotations and code.

Examples

• - **Speed:** It is fast.
• - **Performance:** Performance has been enhanced through optimized algorithms.

Original wording

Guidance

Drop the intensifier unless the same sentence gives exact evidence. Reward specificity and claims that make the weight visible over assertions of importance. Name the concrete result, consequence, or limitation that earns the word.

Legitimate uses

Keep when the word is technically precise ('critical point' in physics, 'critical path' in scheduling, 'significant' in a statistics sentence reporting a p-value). Keep when the same sentence supplies exact evidence the intensifier summarizes. Skip quotations.

Examples

• This is a crucial and profound insight with far-reaching implications.
• a deeply transformative, profoundly important breakthrough

Original wording

Guidance

AI disclaimers about incomplete info left in the text. Replace with a sourced fact or cut. 'While specific details are limited... established in the 1990s' becomes 'Founded in 1994, per its registration documents.'

Legitimate uses

Keep genuine, dated data-currency notes in a report where recency is the explicit subject ('data current as of Q1 2026'). Skip quotations.

Examples

• As of my last update, while specific details are limited based on available information...
• up to my last training, the figure was unclear

Original wording

Guidance

Replace with concrete actions and plain verbs. 'Leverage' becomes 'use'; 'harness' becomes the named mechanism; 'empower' becomes the specific capability granted. Banned especially in teaching content.

Legitimate uses

Keep 'leverage' as a finance/physics noun (financial leverage, mechanical leverage). Keep 'transform' in math/CS senses (a Fourier transform, transform a matrix, data transformation). Keep 'empower' when describing literal legal authorization. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Unlock your potential and transform your workflow to take productivity to the next level.
• We leverage a holistic framework to empower learners.

Original wording

Guidance

In meditation scripts only, eliminate not/don't/isn't/no/never/nothing/without. Say what things ARE ('stay relaxed' instead of 'don't tense'). Project-scoped; this rule would break ordinary prose, so apply only on meditation-script files.

Legitimate uses

Apply ONLY to the author's meditation work guided-script files; never fire on general prose. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Don't let any tension remain; there is nothing you need to do.
• No effort is required.

Original wording

Guidance

In fiction, never have a character study a mirror to catalog their own appearance. Reveal appearance through contrast or a salient plot-relevant detail. Fiction-scoped.

Legitimate uses

Scope to fiction. Keep mirrors that serve plot/theme (a cracked mirror as a clue, a literal mirror in a physics demo). Skip quotations.

Examples

• She looked in the mirror at her green eyes and long auburn hair.

Background

Original wording

Guidance

Tom's capitalized fiction rule, generalizing to all prose: do not negate a phantom alternative to assert the real thing. Delete the negated phantom and show the real thing as concrete physical action or a direct claim. 'The vertigo hit then, not metaphorical, actual' becomes 'The vertigo hit. The room tilted. She gripped the counter.'

Legitimate uses

Keep when genuinely disambiguating a term the reader would otherwise misread as figurative in a context where both readings are live and the distinction is load-bearing. Skip quotations.

Examples

• The vertigo hit then, not metaphorical, actual.
• This wasn't just theory.

Background

Original wording

Guidance

Tom asked for a hook for novel forms: flag sentences that announce importance, difficulty, or effort while conveying no concept (no checkable claim, mechanism, consequence, or specific). Known forms include 'this is where it gets interesting', 'here is the thing', 'this is the crux', 'bear with me', 'stay with me', 'it cannot be overstated', 'let that sink in', 'read that again'. The LLM monitor catches novel variants. Fix by deleting the announcement and stating the actual idea, or by adding the concrete claim the sentence promised.

Legitimate uses

Keep when the sentence both flags and immediately delivers a specific, checkable claim in the same breath. Do not fire on legitimate transitions that carry real content. Skip quotations and anti-example blocks. This is a recall-first heuristic; the fixer/monitor dismisses sentences that do carry a concept.

Examples

• Here's the thing: it changes everything.
• This is where it gets interesting.
• It cannot be overstated how important this is.

Original wording

Guidance

Do not present interpretive lineages as settled one-way transmissions. Verify whether the evidence is documentary or interpretive; if interpretive, lower the claim with 'in dialogue with', 'often read through', 'widely taken as', 'develops in relation to', 'frequently understood as carrying forward'. Mark historical fact and interpretation as different kinds of claim.

Legitimate uses

Keep when documentary evidence genuinely supports the direct claim (a documented citation, letter, or stated influence). Keep literal translation of a text/language. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Deleuze derived his concept of singularity straight from Scotus.
• Her method translated directly into the modern algorithm.

Original wording

Guidance

One or two uses are coincidental; a cluster of 5-6 is a strong tell, or when any single one substitutes for specificity. Do not ban individual words by reflex; replace the ones that stand in for a concrete word.

Legitimate uses

Keep 'ecosystem' for literal ecology, 'crucial/pivotal' where exact evidence follows, 'utilize/enhance' where they carry precise technical meaning, 'nuanced' where the nuance is then delivered. The tell is density and vagueness, not the word alone. Skip quotations.

Examples

• Additionally, we leverage a robust, holistic framework to enhance the intricate tapestry of our ecosystem.
• a comprehensive, nuanced, multifaceted approach

Original wording

Guidance

Do not narrate the agent's evaluation order, page structure, source-checking habit, or page apparatus in reader-facing copy. Name the news, finding, consequence, or the reader's subject. Also covers the author's projects apparatus vocabulary ('evidence trail', 'source ledger', 'the lab below', 'this page/section/module').

Legitimate uses

Keep when the literal subject genuinely is process/methodology being explained to the reader as content. Skip quotations and anti-example blocks.

Examples

• Facts Come Before Commentary
• Source-Checked Before Framing

Original wording

Guidance

State the reality of each level on its own terms; say they are intertwined; never adjudicate which is more real. Degrees of ALIGNMENT (how faithfully an expression embodies what it connects to) are real and encouraged; degrees of REALITY between abstract and concrete are forbidden. Ordinary emergence language ('a level above the genome') is fine.

Legitimate uses

Keep ordinary emergence/level language that does not rank realness. Keep 'more real than' in quoted philosophical sources being reported. This is the abstract-evolution book's specific ontology; treat as watchlist outside that project. Skip quotations.

Examples

• The abstract essence of a need is more real than any particular strategy.
• The pattern transcends the particular instances.

Original wording

Guidance

AI forces ideas into groups of three for false comprehensiveness. Two items often hit harder; each item must earn its place. Check whether the triad is padded ('fast, reliable, and scalable') or genuinely three distinct necessary items.

Legitimate uses

High false-positive rate by design (recall-first). Keep any triad whose three members are genuinely distinct and necessary, technical enumerations, and lists that happen to have three real items. The fixer should dismiss most hits; flag clusters of multiple padded triads. Skip quotations and code.

Examples

• It's fast, reliable, and scalable.
• innovation, inspiration, and industry insights

Original wording

Guidance

In casual news/product copy, do not use 'signal'; reserve it for literal signal transduction or signal processing. Prefer entries, reports, readings, claims, patterns, or items. Project-scoped to the author's news copy.

Legitimate uses

Keep literal/technical signal (signal transduction, signal processing, a radio signal, traffic signal, signal-to-noise). Scope to the author's news copy casual copy. Skip quotations.

Examples

• This release is a strong signal of where coding agents are heading.
• The data sends a clear signal.

Original wording

Guidance

Puffing importance by tying arbitrary facts to a broader topic. Cut the inflation and state the concrete fact. 'established in 1989, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of regional statistics' becomes 'established in 1989 to collect and publish regional statistics.'

Legitimate uses

Keep 'deeply rooted' / 'legacy' in literal botanical, genetic, or software-legacy-code senses. Skip quotations.

Examples

• officially established in 1989, marking a pivotal moment in the evolving landscape
• This stands as a testament to the project's enduring legacy.

Original wording

Guidance

In lyrical/creative prose, fold the comparison into the verb so the action carries the meaning. 'The rain was like tears' becomes 'Rain grieved down the window.' Creative-prose-scoped.

Legitimate uses

Scope to creative/poetic prose; do not fire in technical or expository writing where 'looks like' / 'seemed like' are precise. Keep similes that genuinely earn their place. Skip quotations.

Examples

• The rain was like tears.
• Her voice was like gravel.

Original wording

Guidance

In meditation/gratitude/acknowledgment copy, never assert reverence with spiritual vocabulary; earn it through accurate description of the real process. Project-scoped to the author's meditation work.

Legitimate uses

Scope to the author's meditation work gratitude/meditation content. Keep 'manifest' in its ordinary verb sense ('symptoms manifest as fever'), 'vibration' in physics, 'divine' as a verb ('divine the cause'). Skip quotations.

Examples

• The sacred energy of the earth flows through this blessed material.
• This is your higher purpose manifesting.

Original wording

Guidance

'The real X is Y' implies other things are less real. Describe the thing directly: 'The skill is being willing to ask' instead of 'The real skill isn't technical knowledge, it's being willing to ask.'

Legitimate uses

Keep when distinguishing a genuinely misidentified cause where the reader holds a specific wrong belief and the correction is concrete. Skip quotations.

Examples

• The real reason the build fails is a stale lockfile.
• What really matters is the data model.

Original wording

Guidance

AI capitalizes all main words in headings. Use sentence case: capitalize only the first word and proper nouns. '## How To Optimize Your Workflow' becomes '## How to optimize your workflow'.

Legitimate uses

Do not fire on headings dominated by proper nouns (names, product names, place names) where title case is correct. Skip quotations and code.

Examples

• ## Strategic Negotiations And Global Partnerships
• ## How To Optimize Your Workflow

Original wording

Guidance

Nominates capability framing for review under the shared catalog's current severity.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags AI behavior asserted as a bare universal (in headers/titles) and hard causal overclaims. Capability claims must carry their condition: say when, if, or that the tool can do it, never that it always does.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags self-referential, contentless labels (apply this article, a setup you can paste, putting X to work). Name the result the reader gets or what the prompt does.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags weak, vague mental-act and perception verbs ("name", "see", "watch", "read", "notice", "tell ... apart") that invite a fuzzy internal step or a passive look instead of stating the point, the result, or the check.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags current probable AI-ism patterns as editorial redirect signals, not proof or automatic bans.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags stock phrases that announce significance instead of explaining it.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags formulaic not-X-but-Y contrastive framing.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags "X gets Y ready": an abstract subject plus a causative verb and resulting state that can hide the action.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags growth uses of compounding for review against the requirement for actual exponential growth.

Original wording

Guidance

Blocks figurative money language (worth, pays off, payoff, earns its place) for the value of ideas, habits, or steps.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags stock numerical advice that hides the intended priority, trial, or completed result.

Original wording

Guidance

Requests contextual review of counted advice and output quotas, including digits and larger written numbers.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags finished prose that mentions discarded wording, an earlier draft, or the editor's correction instead of stating the corrected claim.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags advice to route around an employer's controls, such as using a personal account to dodge a locked-down work account.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags 'X is not a Y; it is a Z' reframes where the negation may be factually false — a common AI writing tic that denies obvious categories to sound sophisticated.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags common model-default vocabulary, with stronger terms caught immediately.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags unscientific superlative claims that assert ranking without evidence.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags closed-set 'the N things you act on' enumerations that frame an open set as the complete, only set.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags transport metaphors, placeholder action nouns, and convolution phrasing that replace a plain, concrete claim.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags value-teaser fluff that announces a result is coming instead of delivering it ("Here is the part that saves you time", "here's the catch", "Here is the payoff", "here's where it gets interesting").

Original wording

Guidance

Flags the manufactured-expectation straw-man that tells the reader what to expect so it can be knocked down ("You might expect X... that is rarely how it works", "You might expect to dig through menus. You do not.").

Original wording

Guidance

Flags "real" used as an empty intensifier before nouns where it adds no meaning.

Original wording

Guidance

Blocks generic opening frames that could introduce almost any AI article.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags dramatic profundity gestures that do not add information.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags filler phrases that can usually be cut or simplified.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags sentences that announce importance without carrying the idea.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags dramatic question-fragment transitions.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags inflated substitutes for is, are, and has.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags three or more consecutive very short sentences in one paragraph.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags four or more consecutive short declarative sentences (subject-verb-object, 4-14 words) in one paragraph, signaling syntactic monotony.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags three or more paragraphs within a sliding window of four that open with conditional clauses (When X, If X, Once X, After X).

Original wording

Guidance

Flags sentences that announce a redundant restatement of a point already made ("In other words," "What this means is," "The point is").

Original wording

Guidance

Flags empty conclusion lines.

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Guidance

Blocks the overused placeholder name Maya in public content.

Original wording

Guidance

Blocks embedded reader questionnaires in books and guides so exercises become assistant-led prompt templates.

Original wording

Guidance

Blocks marketing verbs and slogans the writing standards ban in teaching and article copy.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags not-only-but-also constructions.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags clustered importance adjectives.

Original wording

Guidance

Blocks em dash punctuation and double-hyphen em dash substitutes.

Original wording

Guidance

Keeps private source/action/result/review planning fields out of learner-facing prose.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags positioning that tears down unnamed others to sound superior.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags inline numbered lists embedded in prose paragraphs.

Original wording

Guidance

Blocks using abstraction as a synonym for vagueness or useless theory.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags implementation-level MCP language in reader-facing article and guide text.

Original wording

Guidance

Nominates acronyms in headings, titles, and callout titles for contextual familiarity review.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags vague nouns like 'the system' or 'the tool' in teaching content when no specific referent is established nearby.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags sentences with multiple technical terms stacked together in guide content.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags self-referential book-framing: announcing what 'this book is about' or claiming one sentence, loop, or idea carries or is the whole book.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags an imperative used to voice a hypothetical (a command verb coordinated with a third-party consequence clause, with no conditional setup word).

Original wording

Guidance

Flags framing that treats human judgment as sacrosanct or the final authority rather than aiming at the best aligned outcome from human or AI.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags claims that crown one factor or skill as primary, central, or the master key, when relative importance cannot be known.

Original wording

Guidance

Flags one-cause soundbites that collapse a multi-causal idea into a single driver ('comes down to', 'all you need is', 'the one thing that drives it').