Peated Writing

Peated Writing

Write for a whisky database that takes its records seriously and the hobby lightly.

Serious about the record. Light about the drinking.

Set The Register

Identify the surface before writing. Reduce humour as the reader's frustration rises.

Never joke about a person's data, taste, or spending. Joke about the hobby in general or about Peated.

Apply The Rules

1. Put the joke in the noun, not the delivery. Use understatement. Do not use exclamation marks, emoji, winks, or a phrase that explains the joke.
2. Prefer specific, verified facts. Numbers are useful and often carry the humour. Do not invent a number to improve a line.
3. Remove trade, internal, and product-marketing jargon. Use the words a drinker knows.
4. Do not flatter the whisky or the reader. Describe what is known and let the reader decide.
5. State only what Peated can verify. If a record is incomplete, invite the correction instead of apologising for the database.

Choose Plain Words

Avoid these terms in customer-facing copy:

• Trade jargon: expression, liquid, organoleptic, the water of life.
• Internal terms: aggregate, entity, canonical, verdict, grain, band.
• Product marketing: curated, discover, journey, unlock, seamless, experience, community-driven.

Use the visible meaning instead. Write Very good · 85–89, Ratings, Rated, or How people rated instead of exposing an internal measure name.

Dram is allowed at most once per screen. Do not use it in a heading or as a cute plural.

Use NAS for a Bottle confirmed to have no age statement. Age labels and surrounding context normally explain the term; learning-oriented surfaces can spell it out once.

Use Peated Mechanics

• Use second person, contractions, active voice, and short sentences.
• Use numerals for counts, scores, ages, and stats: 6 bottles, not six bottles.
• Use sentence case. Mono capitals are a visual device, not a writing style.
• Keep punctuation consistent within a block. Labels can be fragments.
• Do not name feelings Peated cannot know.
• For a failure, say what failed, what survived, and what the reader can do.

Rewrite Toward Facts

Avoid both extremes:

• Too reverent: A dram of remarkable provenance, matured for forty-six years.
• Too laddish: 46 years old and absolutely sending it. Get involved.
• Peated: Forty-six years in and the smoke has turned to embers — extraordinary, and priced accordingly.

Deliver The Copy

When drafting, return final copy first. Mark facts that still need verification. When reviewing, preserve the intended meaning and interface constraints. Give a replacement for each issue. Explain only decisions that need human judgment.

Before finishing, check that the copy is clear without the joke, contains no unverified claim, uses the right frustration register, and sounds neither like a press release nor a drinking club.