Communication Writing

Communication Writing

Purpose

Turn verified communication-research materials into a coherent manuscript without letting fluent prose outrun theory, design, evidence, or uncertainty. Writing is a research-integration stage, not a substitute for missing analysis.

Required start

1. Identify the document type, study design, target audience/venue, language, carrier, requested sections, length, and permitted evidence.
2. Read the current research contract and accepted handoffs when they exist. Reject stale outputs and conflicting versions before drafting.
3. Build the writing packet in references/writing-contract.md: claim–evidence ledger, number ledger, terminology lock, nonclaims, and section plan.
4. Label missing support UNVERIFIED or AUTHOR_INPUT_NEEDED; never fill it with plausible prose.

Modes

• Plan: produce the storyline, contribution logic, extended outline, and evidence allocation without drafting the full paper.
• Draft: write a new section or manuscript only from authorized evidence.
• Revise: preserve scientific meaning, numbers, citations, equations, and locked terms while changing the requested scope.
• Synchronize: propagate an accepted change across abstract, main text, tables, figures, supplements, metadata, and responses.
• Respond: map each reviewer request to a decision, manuscript change, evidence, locator, and unresolved risk.
• Finalize: run consistency, citation, disclosure, anonymization, and submission checks; final submission still requires human approval.

Writing sequence

1. Write one sentence stating the paper's problem or puzzle, one stating the mechanism, and one stating the evidence-backed contribution.
2. Map every planned paragraph to a reader function, claim, authorized evidence, inference boundary, and bridge to the next paragraph.
3. Draft sections using references/section-logic.md. Use the design-specific rules in references/design-specific-writing.md.
4. Keep results and interpretation separate unless the genre explicitly combines them.
5. Run communication-prose-revision when the draft needs a dedicated anti-formulaic or defensive-writing pass; preserve the writing packet and change ledger.
6. Run a top-down audit (problem → RQ/H → design → evidence → contribution) and a bottom-up audit (evidence → result → interpretation → abstract/conclusion).
7. Use communication-reviewer for independent review; the writer does not self-certify a manuscript as scientifically sound.
8. Apply references/revision-submission.md for rebuttals, journal adaptation, and submission artifacts. Apply references/bilingual-writing.md when translating or writing across Chinese and English.

Evidence and prose rules

• Preserve evidence, inference, hypothesis, recommendation, and unverified as different epistemic states.
• Report null, mixed, adverse, and failed results when they belong to the accepted record. Non-significance is not equivalence.
• Keep causal verbs within the identification design and population boundary.
• Use citations for the exact proposition they support; a real source can still be a false citation.
• Do not introduce a new construct, mechanism, robustness result, sample exclusion, or limitation repair during prose editing.
• Prefer precise, readable sentences over inflated formality, generic transitions, novelty hype, or cosmetic synonym replacement.

Deterministic check

For Markdown drafts with a writing packet, run:

python scripts/check_manuscript.py manuscript.md writing-packet.json

This local, dependency-free check validates required sections, claim and number markers, evidence status, terminology locks, and unresolved placeholders. It does not verify the truth of evidence or replace a full manuscript audit.

Output

Return the requested manuscript artifact plus a compact change/evidence report: sections written, authoritative inputs, unresolved support, consistency checks run, and the next human or auditor decision. Never label a draft submission-ready while any critical evidence, authorship, ethics, declaration, or venue requirement is unresolved.