By name: writing-style description: Writing style guidelines for blog posts and technical documents. Covers tone, formatting, and patterns to avoid. user-invocable: true
Writing Style Guidelines
Personal writing preferences for blog posts and technical documents.
1. Bold Usage
Use sparingly. Bold is for emphasis, not decoration.
- Don't bold every bullet point
- Don't bold "important" words throughout paragraphs
- Reserve bold for truly critical terms or section titles
2. Em-Dash Rules
Only for removable parenthetical phrases. Not for dramatic effect.
Format: --- (triple hyphen), not — (unicode em-dash)
Valid:
I slept for very long last night --- although with no good quality --- and still woke up tired
Invalid and STRICTLY PROHIBITED:
This is important --- and it changes everything
The results were clear --- success
Test: If you can't remove the content between dashes without losing core meaning, don't use em-dashes.
3. Banned Sentence Patterns
Avoid these dramatic/superlative constructions:
- "That's not just X, that's Y --- that's Z"
- "This is the testament to X: that this is Y"
- "I strive to get better not just for X, but for Y that I want to Z"
- "This isn't merely X; it's fundamentally Y"
- Starting sentences with "The key insight here is that..."
- "What makes this particularly interesting is..."
4. Tone Guidelines
- Conversational but technical
- First-person narrative where appropriate
- Honest about uncertainties and WIP status
- Questions-driven structure can be used (pose questions, then answer them, but try to use first-person narrative or a monologue tone)
- No excessive validation or superlatives
- No hedging qualifiers ("quite", "rather", "fairly")
5. Technical Writing
- Include code examples with tensor shapes when relevant
- Use
> Note:blockquotes for asides - Footnotes for paper references
- Concrete numbers over vague statements
- Every claim should be traceable to a commit or doc or a reference link
6. Structure
- Numbered sections with H2 headers
- Lists for enumerable items
- Horizontal rules between major sections
These guidelines are working if: text reads naturally, emphasis is meaningful, and technical content is precise without being dry.