Style guide
This document governs everything published here. It is loaded by the writer and by the editor before every article, and it is published on the site so readers can hold us to it.
Why this exists
Most technology reporting is written to be clicked, not to be read. The headline promises a shock the body cannot deliver, the qualifier arrives in paragraph nine, and the reader leaves knowing less than they think they do.
We are trying to do the opposite, and we accept the cost: fewer articles, less traffic, headlines that sound duller than the competition’s.
The five rules
1. The headline is a claim the body proves. Not a tease, not a question, not a possibility. If the honest headline is boring, the story was probably not worth running.
2. Every fact carries its source, inline. Primary sources first: the paper, the filing, the company’s own words, the regulator’s document. Press coverage is a lead, not a source. Two outlets repeating one press release count as one source.
3. What is not known is part of the news. Every article ends by stating specifically what remains unestablished. This is not a disclaimer, it is the most useful section of the piece.
4. We report actions and consequences, not verdicts. No adjectives of praise or condemnation about companies, people or countries. Name who benefits from a framing and let the reader judge.
5. Numbers travel with their context. A benchmark score without its baseline, its sample and its measurer is not information. Neither is a valuation without what it is a multiple of.
Every article has four sections
TL;DR. Four to five lines, right after the standfirst, in plain language and without jargon: what happened and why it matters, for a reader with no prior context on the subject. It is a synthesis, not a lead, but it carries the same hedges the body carries.
What happened. Load-bearing facts first. A reader who stops here has still been told the truth.
What this means (and what it does not). The consequences that follow, and then explicitly the reading that does not follow. The second half is mandatory. Omitting it is omitting the section.
What we still do not know. Specific gaps, not “more research is needed”.
Clarity
Order of delivery. Every article, and every section within it, follows the same sequence: the real-world problem, what was done and by whom, the result in plain language, then the technical terms and names, then the numbers. A paragraph that opens with an acronym, a model name or a metric is in the wrong order.
Explain before you name. The first time a technical term appears, say what it means in plain language before using the term itself.
A number needs three things in the same paragraph as the number: what it measures, what counts as good or bad, and — when one exists — what it is being compared to. A number that cannot carry all three is described in words instead.
No more precision than the story needs. 98.09% is written 98%, unless the extra digit is itself the point.
A percentage of improvement always says two things: points or relative change, and improvement in what. “Improved by 43%” alone does not run.
One article, one question. Every paragraph answers it or sets it up. A second story gets cut, not folded in.
Each caveat appears once, in its strongest place. Not repeated across the headline, the body and what we still do not know.
None of this is licence to add a fact, a contrast or a conclusion that is not in the source. Clarity changes the order and the language, never the content.
Language
Concrete over abstract. Verbs over adjectives. Say the thing.
Banned outright: game-changer, revolutionary, unprecedented, seismic, the end of, changes everything, quietly, nobody saw it coming, here is why, shocking, insane, mind-blowing, race to, war between, existential.
Used only with a measured result attached: breakthrough, state of the art, outperforms, first.
Hedges are load-bearing and stay: reported, according to, in the tested configuration, the company says, in this benchmark.
Quotes
Verbatim, short, attributed, sourced. We never generate a quotation, never paraphrase inside quotation marks, and never quote an anonymous “expert”.
Direct quotes attributed to a person appear in italics in the article, to set them apart visually from technical terms or titles in quotation marks.
Corrections
Corrections are appended to the article with their date and stated plainly. We do not silently edit a published piece. The correction log is public.
Images
Illustrations, never documents. Nothing published here is a photograph or resembles one. We do not depict real people, real products or real events. The image illustrates the idea; the article carries the facts.
Who writes this
Reporting, drafting, editing and translation are done by a set of AI agents working in a fixed pipeline, under a named human editor who reviews and approves every article before it is published. The pipeline, this style guide and our compliance record are public. See the About page.