House Style: a note to self
How I write, and why it matters
Years of writing – and drawing, and speaking in public – has taught me that style isn’t decoration. It’s not something you apply at the end, like varnish.
Form and content are two ideas for one thing that is indivisible: you can’t have one without the other. Style informs how you think, and therefore determines what you’re trying to say.
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that every person on the planet has a different voice. A different idiolect. As you may know, the Unabomber got caught because he insisted on saying “eating your cake and having it” instead of the other way round. He couldn’t help himself. And lately I’ve been thinking about my own idiolect – the patterns and tics and rhythms that make my voice mine. So I started jotting them down.
This page is the result: a note I’ve put together so that I can use it when I need to – for example when briefing an AI assistant1. The hope is that by capturing something of my idiolect, the thing that comes back will sound a bit more like me. So when I use an AI to help me draft something, or brief a collaborator – or just want to remind myself how I like to do things – it helps to have this written down.
Consider this a working document, not a manifesto. I’ll update it as my thinking changes.
Spelling and punctuation
British English throughout. No em dashes – use space hyphen space instead. No Oxford comma.
Titles and headings
Sentence case only – capital letter on the first word, not throughout.
Syntax and rhythm
Drop the preliminary definite or indefinite article where it creates a pleasing abruptness2: One thing I’m sure of, not “The one thing I’m sure of.” Shorter sentences, mostly. No nominalisations where a verb will do – “I realised”, not “I came to the realisation.” Asides land as short, flat statements after a longer winding one. “He couldn’t help it.” “None of them.”
Tone
Warm but not salesy. Address the reader directly, as one person to another. Not trying to sell anything – just noting something. Self-deprecating where appropriate. Comfortable with uncertainty and thinking out loud. Will push back on phrases that feel showy or self-congratulatory.
What it actually sounds like
Starts with a story. People introduced with a single telling detail. Drawn to the quirky and unexpected. Comfortable with contradiction – can feel two ways about something and say so without resolving it. Ends on a slightly unexpected note, something that undercuts the sentiment just enough to feel honest.
Format
Textile markup. Bold with asterisks, italic with underscores. Titles in sentence case. Lists written as prose, not bullet points.
Voice
First person. Written to be comprehensible to a visitor, not just the author. Assumes an intelligent, curious reader.
1 AI assistant. Currently I use Claude – in fact I used Claude to help write this. Got a lot of the boring work done quickly, then I came back in to write sentences like this one (hello, yes, it’s me writing!). The trick is to use the tool without letting it use you.
2 Pleasing abruptness. Hemingway used this in Green Hills of Africa to draw attention to the green-ness itself, rather than the approach to it.