writing-style

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: -- (double hyphen), not — (unicode em-dash)

Valid:

I slept for very long last night -- although with no good quality -- and still woke up tired

Invalid:

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

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These guidelines are working if: text reads naturally, emphasis is meaningful, and technical content is precise without being dry.