Concede first, then answer.
The strongest move in the memo is stating the bear case before anyone else can. Copy inherits it.
The data is public. The data is not the moat.
A frontier model plus our open corpus does 70% of this. The last 30% is where the value is.
The five rules
1. Concede first, then answer.
The strongest move in the memo is stating the bear case before anyone else can. Copy inherits it.
2. Load-bearing specificity.
Every claim should name the thing. NPRM, RIN, 42 U.S.C. § 1395x, obligated ÷ authorized at 24 months, Fifth Circuit. Vagueness reads as a hedge, and this brand has already promised not to hedge.
3. Short sentence carries the load; the long sentence explains it.
Declarative, then the qualification. Never the reverse.
4. Never a recommendation.
This is a legal constraint (the publisher's exemption), enforced at the schema level in the product — so it is enforced in copy too. Downstream states exposures, distributions, catalysts, and falsifiers. It never says buy, sell, you should, the right move is. Marketing copy included.
5. Publish the miss in the same typeface as the hit.
No smaller type for corrections, no archived-away errata page. If a forecast resolved wrong, the Ledger entry looks identical to one that resolved right.
Mechanics
- Bold carries exactly one load-bearing clause per paragraph. It's a reading aid, not emphasis.
- Italics for terms of art on first use, case names (Loper Bright), and self-interrogation.
- Em dashes for precision asides — the parenthetical you'd actually say out loud — never for drama.
- The section sign
§is a live character, not decoration:§ 71101(a)(2),memo §7, slide§04 / 10. - Numbers are never rounded for rhetoric.
~90%when it's a gate,4.53:1when it's measured. - Sentence case for headings. Title Case reads corporate and slows scanning in dense tables.
- Oxford comma. Serial precision is the whole personality.
Lexicon
The full table from design.md §2, unabridged.
| Say | Not | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Provision | Bill, law | The atomic unit is the provision. This is the central insight. |
| Consequence, downstream effect | Impact | "Impact" is the category's filler word. |
| Observed, resolved | Verified, confirmed | We observed it in a source; we didn't bless it. |
| Silent | No data, N/A | An agency taking no observable action is a finding, not a gap. |
| Calibrated | Accurate, smart | Accuracy without calibration is the thing we're against. |
| Base rate, reference class | Benchmark | Names the statistical object. |
| Point-in-time, as_of | Historical, snapshot-based | The term of art quants already use. |
| Citable to a primary source | Sourced, backed by data | Says exactly how much we're claiming. |
| Exposure | Recommendation, signal, play | Legal constraint, not style. |
| The Ledger | Our track record, transparency report | It's a named object with a schema. |
| Open, free forever | Freemium, community edition | Layer 1 is not a marketing tier. |
revolutionize · unleash · empower · game-changing · AI-powered · seamless · democratize · unprecedented · leverage (verb) · insights (as a noun product) · effortless · magic · supercharge
predicts · knows · guarantees · real-time (say the actual latency) · comprehensive (say the coverage and the caveat) · neutral (say the methodology)
Register by audience
Never blend two registers in one artifact. A deck slide that opens with hazard notation and closes with "a country that can see what its laws do" is worse than either.
"Legislators pass laws into a void." Moral, plain, no jargon, no numbers.
"You don't analyze a bill as a whole — you break it into clauses." Explains the mechanism in one sentence, then says who pays and why.
P(implementation | enactment) × P(survives litigation) × magnitude × timing. Assumes fluency, spends no words earning it.