Writing

Writing

1. The 6 Principles

Framed for code, and they govern writing identically.

This is their one home. CLAUDE.md names them and points here.

Full writeup, pinned at the commit these six were read from: good-code/PRINCIPLES.md.

1. Consistent — the same concept named the same everywhere makes work searchable, replaceable, predictable.
2. Correct — constructed from known truths, not debugged into shape.
3. Clear — intent obvious from naming and logic alone. If a comment is needed to explain what, it's not clear enough.
4. Concise — nothing left to remove. Brevity is fewer concepts to hold, not fewer characters.
5. Simple — fewest moving parts, easy to explain, cheap to maintain.
6. Salient — essential enough to be used widely, fundamental enough to last.

2. Structure over sprawl

7. Never write long paragraphs. Nothing is salient inside a wall, tall or wide.

8. A long line joined by · or — is sprawl with the line breaks removed. Five ideas on one line removes zero concepts and adds parsing work.

9. The fix is always structure, never compression. Cut what is not needed, then nest what survives. Vertical space is free. Parsing effort is not.

10. Every level doc uses one section order, so a reader who knows one knows them all: what you own · dispatch · review · what reaches the level above · budget and cost.

    • A section with nothing to say at that level is dropped, never padded. Its absence is the claim that another level owns it.

11. Before adding a clause, ask whether a capable worker would do it anyway. If yes it is reassurance, not a rule, and it costs attention it does not repay.

    • Three things earn a place: a preference nobody could guess · a boundary on who decides · a failure that already happened, carrying its fingerprint.

3. Lists and nesting

12. Numbered by default. So a reader can reference item 9 rather than "the bit about walls." Bullets only where order and reference genuinely do not matter.
13. One idea per line, short enough to read without scrolling. Never fold a list inline as (1)… (2)… (3)….
14. Nest detail on the spot. The parent line carries the claim, its children the evidence and exceptions.
    • Indent exactly 4 spaces per level. Always. Not 2, not a tab, not aligned to the bullet.
    • A sub-list stays a sub-list. It does not restart numbering or drift into prose.
    • Depth stops at three levels. A fourth means the parent is really a section: promote it to a heading.

4. Vocabulary

15. Write the result, not the label. "A bounded null" hides the finding. "The test could not have shown anything either way" carries it.
16. Could a sharp person who has never seen this work read the line and know what happened? If they would have to ask what a word means, it is not finished. Jargon reads as precision and functions as concealment. It lets a half-understood result pass as a finished one.
17. A term the reader has not used first is not available, unless it is defined in the same sentence and earns the space.
18. Avoid inflated stock phrases like "load-bearing" and kin. Use the plain word: core, essential, decisive.
19. Audience sets the boundary. Specialists writing to specialists may use the domain's vocabulary. Anything reaching a non-specialist may not.

5. Reports

20. Cut framing, not content: no preamble, no headers with paragraphs under them, no closing reflection. Reflection and self-assessment are not a report. Include them only when asked.
21. Both directions are defects. Prose that must be read to be understood, and telegram so compressed the reader cannot reconstruct what happened. A line earns its length by carrying information, never by carrying tone.
22. A report to someone senior is capped at what they will actually read, roughly 20 items and 700 words. Past that they skim, and skimming picks the wrong line.
23. Rewrite it whole. Never append. A living report grows by accretion, because adding a correction is cheaper than re-deciding what belongs. It always ends up twice the length nobody asked for. Every update re-derives the whole list from scratch. Items that mattered yesterday and not today are cut, not demoted.

6. Review and refinement

A first draft is never the deliverable. Writing is made good in review, not in drafting.

Load the review skill. It holds the four lenses, what each asks, who may sit, and how a verdict is reached — for a draft exactly as for a build. What follows is only what writing adds.

24. Correctness runs before communication. There is no point polishing a claim that is wrong.
25. Writing needs more of the fact-checker than code does. Prose can carry a wrong figure indefinitely without failing anything.
26. Refine continuously, never only at the end. Adding without realigning turns a document incoherent. A piece revisited three times while short beats one polished once when long.