Voice
A design language that fixes the palette and leaves the words to chance ships half an identity. Voice is the prose half: eight universal laws that strip the machine accent out of generated text, then one register per language, derived from the same philosophy that drives its visuals. Words resolve the way colors do, from a token file, and the QA gate checks them.
The universal laws (FN-07)
Every language inherits these before its own register applies. Six of the eight are machine-checked; the two that need a reader are marked as such.
| # | Law | Why | Check |
|---|---|---|---|
| V1 | No em-dashes. | The single strongest machine-writing tell. A comma, a period, a colon, or a parenthesis always fits. | no U+2014 or U+2013 in any generated prose |
| V2 | Numbers replace intensity adjectives. | An intensity word without a quantity is an opinion wearing a fact's clothes. If it cannot be quantified, it cannot be claimed. | a vague_words hit with no digit in the same sentence fails |
| V3 | The banned phrase list is closed and greppable. | These phrases carry no information and appear in every model's output. Deleting them costs nothing and removes the accent. | no banned_phrases substring, case-insensitive |
| V4 | Active voice with a named subject. | Hollow constructions hide who acts. Someone decides, ships, blocks, approves. The exception is legal register, where the document is the actor. | no hollow_patterns substring, case-insensitive |
| V5 | One idea per sentence, under the language's cap. | Stacked clauses are how a model pads. Each design language sets its own sentence_max_words. | every sentence within the design language's sentence_max_words |
| V6 | No throat-clearing. | The first sentence of a block carries content. An opener that restates the context is deleted, not shortened. | human review; the banned list covers the common openers |
| V7 | No decorative triads. | Three adjectives in a row are rhythm, not information. A list exists when the items differ in content. | human review |
| V8 | No exclamation marks. | Emphasis comes from the fact, not the punctuation. This holds in every design language. | no exclamation mark outside quoted material |
The closed lists
Case-insensitive substring match against
decision/voice.json. Quoted material is exempt, so a rule may
name the phrase it bans and a legal page may quote its source
verbatim.
Banned phrases (33)
it's worth noting, it is worth noting, worth noting that, delve, dive into, in today's, fast-paced, seamless, holistic, cutting-edge, game-changer, unlock the, elevate your, streamline, navigate the complexities, at the end of the day, when it comes to, plays a crucial role, not just, but rather, the landscape of, leveraging, leverage the, testament to, a myriad of, in conclusion, furthermore, moreover, interesting, notably, importantly, clearly, obviously.
Words that need a number in the same sentence (23)
significant, major, substantial, considerable, dramatic, notable, remarkable, robust, various, several, properly, appropriately, as needed, efficiently, effectively, potential, potentially, carefully, stunning, exceptional, finest, world-class, passion.
Hollow constructions (14)
is being made, are being made, progress is being, it was decided, there are several, there is a need, we believe, we would like to, we are pleased to, it might be, may need to, going forward, a good idea, in order to.
Caps at a glance
Each language declares how long a sentence and a title may run. The validator checks the language's own examples against its own caps.
| Language | Register | Sentence cap | Title cap | Mood |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL-01 AGRAW | measured, formal-plain | 18 | 12 | declarative |
| DL-02 KATA | clipped, telegraphic | 12 | 12 | declarative, formulaic |
| DL-03 LOGOS | analytic prose | 25 | 14 | argumentative declarative |
| DL-04 SHILPA | technical, impersonal | 16 | 12 | imperative in steps |
| DL-05 OBEYA | spoken, direct | 8 | 8 | question titles, imperative actions |
| DL-06 LEX | legal-neutral | 22 | 14 | declarative, no contractions |
| DL-07 SAGA | journalistic | 22 | 12 | active headlines, past tense allowed |
| DL-08 SENTINEL | label vocabulary, closed set | 10 | 10 | stateful, uppercase labels |
| DL-09 ATLAS | positional, kinetic | 18 | 12 | declarative, movement verbs |
| DL-10 BASIRA | spare, documentary | 20 | 14 | declarative fragments allowed |
| DL-11 SUTRA | formal, dense | 20 | 12 | declarative, numbered |
| DL-12 NOROSHI | urgent-terse | 12 | 10 | verdict then imperative |
| DL-13 MIZAN | warm, literary-plain | 24 | 12 | second person welcome |
| DL-14 EVIDENTIA | quantified, footnoted | 20 | 14 | declarative takeaways |
| DL-15 ABRID | structural, relational | 20 | 12 | question titles allowed |
| DL-16 TELOS | direct, conclusive | 18 | 12 | answer-first declarative |
What it costs an agent
Measured on the generated blocks in this build, at four characters per token. The voice section adds about 422 tokens to the one language block a request loads (block average: 1127 tokens), and the universal laws ship as a 444-token runtime block that carries the rules without the reasoning. The handbook prose on this page never enters an agent context: PROTOCOL.md section 2.1 governs, and an agent loads one language, not the catalogue.
The sixteen voices
Stance, fingerprint, title grammar in the language's own display font, three precepts each way with the reason, and the same point written twice: once in generic machine prose, once in the language.
The counselor's voice. AGRAW writes the way a trusted advisor speaks to a council: few words, weighed before spoken, verdict first. The reader is senior, short on time, and about to decide. Prose that narrates the work instead of delivering the counsel wastes the one minute it gets.
- Open every page with the verdict.The council reads the first line and the chart. Everything after that is optional.
- Round numbers to the grain of the decision.A council decides on 4%, not on 4.23%. Precision past the decision is noise.
- Attach an owner and a date to every recommendation.A recommendation with no owner is an observation.
- Never narrate the work."We analyzed" and "after reviewing" spend the reader's minute on the journey, not the conclusion.
- No stacked hedges."Could potentially" says less than either word alone. Quantify the uncertainty or drop it.
- No unexplained acronyms.Council membership rotates, so the page has to stand alone.
It's worth noting that the project has been experiencing some delays which could potentially impact the overall timeline going forward.
The programme is six weeks late. Recovery needs a decision on night shifts by 12 September.
The drumbeat voice. KATA's reader compares this week against last week. New phrasing breaks the comparison: when the same event is cleared one week, processed the next, and finalized the week after, the reader re-parses instead of scanning. Varied wording is a defect here. Same words, same order, every period; only the numbers move.
- Lock one term per concept and repeat it forever.Synonym rotation is where padding enters a recurring deck.
- Pair every number with its period delta.A weekly page without the delta makes the reader remember last week.
- Match the words in the prose to the status words on the chips.The language already prints the word on the chip; the text may not contradict it.
- No elegant variation and no fresh metaphors.Novelty costs scanning speed and adds nothing week over week.
- Never claim progress with an adjective.The delta is shorter than the adjective and it survives being quoted.
- No pleasantries.Nobody is pleased. It is Tuesday and this is the weekly page.
We are pleased to report significant progress in clearance activities this week across the portfolio.
Clearance: 41 of 50 files complete, +5 on last week. Nine held at the port. Owner: logistics.
The essayist analyst. LOGOS is the one language that writes in dense prose: full sentences that argue, in the tradition of the printed chartbook. The title states a claim, the paragraph proves it, the source sits beside it. Causal connectives are the product here, because the reader came for the because.
- Use causal connectives: because, despite, which explains.Analysis without causality is a table read out loud.
- Cite the source next to the claim, never in an appendix.The language's law is that sources stay visible; the prose obeys the same law.
- Keep exact figures where they carry the argument.In a deep dive, 18.3% and about 18% are different claims.
- Never flag your own findings as worth attention."Interestingly" and "notably" ask the reader to be impressed. Show the anomaly instead.
- No assertion without its evidence in the same breath.An unanchored claim breaks the core contract of this language.
- No bullet fragments in body text.LOGOS argues in sentences. Fragments belong to KATA and NOROSHI.
The data shows an interesting trend in freight volumes that is worth examining in more detail.
Freight volume fell 18% after April, when cable moved from air to sea (packing lists, weeks 14 to 22).
The procedure writer. SHILPA treats words as components: standardized, interchangeable, machine-readable. Every noun is the defined term, every instruction is one sentence, every value carries its unit. Ambiguity in a procedure is not a style problem, it is a safety problem.
- Put the identifier and the unit on every value.45 Nm at JB-4102 survives being photocopied out of context.
- Use the imperative for steps: verify, torque, record.The reader executes, so the verb is the instruction.
- Define a term once, then reuse it word for word.Two names for one part read as two parts.
- Never use a pronoun where an identifier fits."It" is the most dangerous word in a procedure.
- No approximation words."Tighten properly" cannot be inspected. A tolerance can.
- No stylistic variation between sections.Identical structure lets a technician find step 7 without reading steps 1 to 6.
Make sure the cables are properly connected and everything is in order before proceeding with testing.
Verify gland torque at JB-4102 terminals 1 to 12 (45 Nm) before the insulation test. Record the result in form CT-07.
The spoken voice. OBEYA text is read at three meters, in a morning stand-up, by people wearing gloves. Write the way a good site lead talks: names, numbers, today. A line that cannot be said out loud to the person it concerns does not go on the wall.
- Use names, not roles.Ownership is the law of this language, and a name on a wall gets acted on.
- Keep the time words at today and this week.The board resets daily. Anything older belongs in SAGA.
- Write bullets, never paragraphs.Nobody reads a paragraph standing up.
- No past-tense storytelling.The stand-up is about the next 24 hours.
- No abbreviations that need decoding at distance.At three meters an abbreviation is wallpaper.
- Never write a count you have not counted."Several items" and "various stakeholders" name nothing and get assigned to nobody.
There are several outstanding items requiring attention from various stakeholders across the project.
Three blockers today. Crane permit: Nadia. Cable drums: contractor. Scaffold: Sam, Thursday.
The witness voice. Every LEX sentence has to survive cross-examination: neutral, dated, referenced. The facts carry the argument and adjectives weaken it. This is the one language where the active-voice law relaxes, because the document, not the actor, is the evidence.
- Use absolute dates, always."Recently" is worth nothing to a tribunal reading the file two years later.
- Attribute every statement to a document reference.The law of this language is that citations are mandatory. Prose without a reference is opinion.
- Keep the capitalized defined terms of the contract.Contractual language holds one meaning per term, and the page inherits it.
- No evaluative adjectives."Unreasonable" and "excessive" ask for a conclusion. 47 days late argues better.
- No speculation about intent or motive.Acts and dates are evidence. States of mind are not.
- No rhetorical questions.A question you answer yourself reads as advocacy, and as weak advocacy.
The contractor clearly failed to act in a timely manner, causing serious delays to the overall project.
The Contractor submitted the revised schedule 47 days after the 10 April 2025 deadline (Ref C-1042). The slippage appears in the June progress report, section 3.
The correspondent's voice. SAGA is the newspaper of the programme: the headline tells the story, the lede gives who, what and when, and the piece is written for the archive. A reader a year from now, with no context, should understand what happened in week 31 and why it mattered.
- Name the week in the lede.Explicit time is the law of this language, and the archive depends on it.
- Let people and crews do things."The team recovered two days" is a story. The passive version is a shrug.
- Carry the arc: say what changed since the last issue.Continuity is the product. A digest with no memory is a list.
- No corporate passive."It was decided that" hides the decider, and journalism names them.
- No vague roundups.If an item earned a line, it earned a fact.
- No bullet dumps in the lead story.The lead is prose. Bullets belong in the back-page briefs.
This week saw various developments across multiple workstreams with progress being made in several areas.
Week 31: the northern corridor reopened after the bridge repair, releasing 14 trucks held since 18 July.
The instrument voice. SENTINEL barely writes. Words on a monitoring wall are instrumentation: label, value, state, timestamp. A full sentence on a SENTINEL screen means something has already gone wrong, and even then it gets one line.
- Fix the label vocabulary once per screen family.Operators scan by position and word shape, and drift breaks the scan.
- Timestamp every state.A state with no as-of time is a guess on a live wall.
- Keep the state set closed at three levels.Fast scanning needs categories, not shades of concern.
- No sentences except the alert line.Low cognitive load is the law of this language, and prose is load.
- No synonyms for a state, ever."STABLE" next to "NOMINAL" forces a mental join at a glance.
- No reassurance copy.The absence of alerts is the reassurance.
Everything appears to be running smoothly at the moment with no major issues detected across systems.
ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL, 09:42. LAST INCIDENT 14H AGO. WATCH: STATION 4 PRESSURE, +2%/H.
The navigator's voice. Every ATLAS sentence orients: place, direction, distance, exception. The reader is somewhere on the line and wants to know what lies ahead. A sentence with no location is cargo with no waybill, and it does not belong on the page.
- Lead with the place: chainage, section, or site.Geography drives the layout in this language, so it drives the syntax too.
- Use movement verbs: advances, reaches, holds at.A route report is about motion, and static verbs hide the trend.
- Locate every exception.Two delayed crossings mean nothing until the reader knows where they are.
- No placeless progress.If it has no coordinates it is not route news.
- No comparison without a direction.Ahead and behind mean nothing on a line until you say which way.
- No place named in the text that the map does not show.Text and map anchor each other one to one.
Good progress is being made along the route with teams working hard to maintain momentum.
Lowering-in reached KP 796, 18 km short of the coastal tie-in. Two wet crossings at KP 802 hold the front.
The caption voice. In BASIRA the image is the evidence and the words are a whisper beside it. A caption never describes what the eye already sees. It adds the one thing the eye cannot know: the date, the place, the significance. Silence is a valid caption.
- State only what the image cannot show.Date, place, what changed, what it means. That is the whole job of a caption.
- Anchor a before-and-after pair with identical framing words.Same words, different date: the delta becomes the story.
- Allow no caption at all.Authenticity comes first, and a strong image with a weak caption is a weaker page.
- Never narrate the visible.The reader has eyes, and the caption insults them.
- No gloss adjectives.Marketing words destroy documentary credibility faster than a bad photograph.
- No paragraph captions.Past twenty words the reader is reading, not seeing.
This stunning image shows workers carefully installing the new pipeline section as progress continues.
KP 640, dawn pour. The last river weight before the rains.
The aphorist. A sutra is a thought compressed until nothing can be removed. Every SUTRA sentence carries one complete idea and survives being quoted alone. Numbered points, formal address, and the recommendation stated twice: first line and last.
- One idea per numbered point, each a full sentence.Points get quoted back in replies, and fragments quote badly.
- State the recommendation first and repeat it last.A memo is skimmed at the top and the bottom, so the cargo sits at both doors.
- Give cost and risk as a pair of numbers.Costs 0.4, avoids 2.1: that is a decision in nine words.
- No naked bullets without syntax.A bullet that is not a sentence pushes the thinking onto the reader.
- No stacked softeners around the position.A position paper takes a position, and twelve hedge words is not one.
- No enthusiasm and no urgency theatrics.In this register, restraint is the credibility.
We think it might be a good idea to consider potentially postponing the tie-in to a later date.
1. Defer the station tie-in to Q2. The deferral costs 0.4 MUSD; attempting Q1 risks 2.1 MUSD in standby crews.
The beacon voice. A signal fire burns once and means one thing. The first line is the alarm, and every word after it either shortens the response time or is smoke. One exception per page, one owner, one deadline. Background reading belongs to another language.
- Put the alarm in the first ten words.The immediate verdict is the first law of this language; the subject line is the page.
- Count down in days remaining, not in dates alone.Six days left lands harder than a date. Give both.
- Put an owner and a deadline on the action.An escalation with no owner escalates nothing.
- No background section.Whoever needs the history was not the right recipient.
- Never soften the finding."Slight concern" and "potential issue" describe something that did not need a flash report.
- One signal per page, never two.Two alarms split the response and the second one dies.
We would like to flag a potential concern regarding diesel availability that may need attention soon.
Diesel: 6 days of stock. The port has held the tanker since Friday. Approve the road transfer today. Owner: logistics. Deadline: Thursday 12:00.
The craftsman's voice. MIZAN is the one language where rhythm outranks compression: warm, unhurried, concrete. Beauty comes from precise sensory nouns, never from adjectives that admire on the reader's behalf. Cedar and brass persuade; a claim of quality does not.
- Use sensory concrete nouns: material, tool, gesture, place.A reader trusts what they can picture.
- Vary sentence length on purpose.A short sentence after two long ones is the only special effect this language has.
- Keep one image per paragraph.Harmony comes before decoration, and crowded images cancel each other.
- No superlatives."Finest" and "world-class" are the fastest way to sound like every other shop.
- No urgency mechanics.Scarcity theater breaks the unhurried register the palette promises.
- No feature list disguised as prose.A paragraph that is secretly a spec sheet reads as one.
Our exceptional handcrafted products represent the finest tradition of artisanship, made with passion.
Each tray leaves the workshop the way it entered, by hand. The hammer marks are the signature.
The exhibit voice. The consulting register done honestly: the title is the takeaway with the number inside it, every figure carries a footnote, every list divides cleanly. Prose is scaffolding for quantities, and a claim with no denominator is not a claim, it is a mood.
- Put a number in every title.A takeaway with no quantity means the exhibit is not finished.
- Footnote the source of every figure.Integral footnotes are the law of this language, and the prose obeys it.
- Give every share its denominator.62% of an 8.4 MUSD overrun survives scrutiny. A bare 62% invites it.
- No unquantified driver."A major factor" begs the question: compared with what? The comparison is the analysis.
- No orphan exhibit.A chart with no one-line so-what is data, not evidence.
- No persuasion adverbs."Clearly" and "obviously" admit the proof is short.
The analysis reveals that logistics costs are a major driver of the overall budget overrun.
Logistics is 62% of the 8.4 MUSD overrun; three orders account for 4.1 MUSD (note 1).
The cartographer of ideas. ABRID sentences are edges between nodes: X gates Y, A trades off against B. Parallel structure is the grammar. When three branches of a framework are written in three different syntaxes, the framework is decoration. Every element named in the diagram is named identically in the prose.
- Name the type of connection: drives, blocks, feeds, trades against.Explicit connections are the law of this language, and "relates to" is not a relation.
- Keep parallel syntax across the branches.The same grammatical shape signals the same logical level.
- Keep framework labels at three words and reuse them word for word.When the box says one thing and the sentence says another, the reader does the mapping.
- No orphan box.An element with no stated relation is clutter wearing a border.
- No mixed forms inside one list.A noun, then a verb phrase, then a sentence makes the reader sort what the author skipped.
- Never write that factors are connected without naming the connections."Interconnected factors" is the exact tell this language exists to kill.
There are several interconnected factors affecting the schedule that need to be considered holistically.
Clearance capacity gates three levers: it delays release, release delays kitting, kitting delays loop closure. Fix the gate, not the branches.
The closer's voice. A TELOS page exists to close a question. The first sentence answers it, the last sentence assigns the action, and everything between defends the answer. Suspense structure is the cardinal sin here: background, then analysis, then conclusion makes the reader earn what they already paid for.
- Answer in the first line: yes, no, or the figure.Answer first is the founding law of this language.
- Give three supports at most.A fourth reason signals that the first three were weak.
- End with the action and its owner.Ending with clarity means the reader knows what happens next and who does it.
- No suspense structure.Background-first writing is deference, and this page was paid for an answer.
- No both-sides padding when the evidence points one way.False balance reads as not having done the work.
- Turn every qualifier into a condition."May be achievable" becomes: holds if trenching restarts by 1 October.
After careful analysis of multiple factors, we believe the target may potentially be achievable under certain conditions.
The Q4 target holds, on one condition: trenching restarts by 1 October. Slip past that and start-up moves to February.