49 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
# Editorial charter
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The standard for every audience-facing word on unique.rzen.dev — find bodies, review bodies, bundle blurbs and intros, subtitles, descriptions — and the canonical home of the content rules that bind what gets published at all. Skills reference this file; the pipeline's copy-edit pass enforces the voice, and each pipeline stage enforces the content rules that apply to it.
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## The north star
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The only thing we control is what we write, and the ultimate editorial principle is to **write content that consistently and reliably delights the reader**. Everything else in this file — voice, word budgets, selection judgment — is in service of that goal. (The content rules below are hard constraints on how we pursue it, never competitors to it.)
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Delight is also cumulative and rhythmic: a fresh pick of the day, a new bundle, a surprising find are each small daily contributions to it. Freshness is part of the product.
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## The voice in one line
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Concise, to the point, and above all **inspiring delight**.
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## Principles
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1. **Delight is specificity.** Name the exact detail that makes someone light up — the silicone bumper that survives concrete, the hinge that closes with a click you can feel. Generic praise ("great design", "beautifully made") is dead copy; if the sentence could describe a hundred products, cut it.
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2. **Lead with the virtue, not the category.** The reader learns *why it's wonderful* before *what shelf it sits on*.
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3. **Every sentence earns its place.** No throat-clearing openings ("In a world where…", "We've all been there"), no scene-setting preamble, no restating in the close what the lead already said. If a sentence can go without losing a fact or a smile, it goes.
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4. **No ad copy.** Never "game-changer", "must-have", "stunning", exclamation points, or any superlative a competitor's brochure could also print. Enthusiasm comes from detail, not volume.
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5. **Honest beats glossy.** Limitations stated plainly; corrections from fact-checking called out when they're interesting. Trust is the site's only currency.
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6. **The forward test.** Before publishing, ask: would a friend forward this to another friend with "look at this"? If not, find the detail that would make them — or cut deeper.
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## Content rules
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Voice governs how we say it; these govern what we publish. Skills restate the rule that applies to their stage, but this list is the source of truth — when they drift, this file wins.
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1. **No tobacco or alcohol** — categorical, at every stage: never captured as finds, never selected into new bundles, never graduated to reviews. No exception for beautiful design, craftsmanship, or gift appeal; borderline cases (dual-use glassware, non-alcoholic "spirits", brewery-adjacent merch) get skipped too. A few legacy alcohol finds (May–July 2026) stay published and keep their bundle spots but are ineligible for anything new.
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2. **Front-page safety** — the pick of the day is the front page and must be broadly, unmistakably benign. Never anything that could read as endorsing or depicting harm: weapons or anything that cuts, burns, or explodes; anything dangerous or injury-prone; how-to's for any of that; horror or disturbing media. Such items can still be finds and reviews — they just never get the hero.
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3. **No camping gear in the hero** — camper trailers and other camping equipment never take the pick of the day. Fine as finds, occasional as reviews, never the front page.
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4. **Rules look forward** — what's published is published. A new rule governs future picks, finds, bundles, and reviews only; it never triggers retroactive edits or unpublishing.
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## Word budgets
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| Copy | Budget |
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|---|---|
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| Find body | 40–90 words (2–3 sentences) |
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| Review body | 250–450 words; hard ceiling 600 |
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| Review — narrative subjects (travel, history, story-led) | up to ~800 when the story itself is the delight — it must earn every paragraph |
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| Bundle blurb | one sentence |
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| Bundle intro | 1–2 sentences |
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| Subtitle / description | one line, no trailing period needed |
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Budgets are ceilings, not targets — a 250-word review that says everything beats a 450-word one that pads.
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## For the copy editor
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The copy-edit pass (daily-pipeline stage 4) edits **prose only**: tighten, sharpen, de-pad, enforce the budgets. Never change facts, names, prices, links, claims, or frontmatter beyond wording of `subtitle`/`description`/`blurb`. Never add a claim the author didn't make. When a piece is over budget, cut the weakest material — don't compress every sentence into mush. When in doubt between two cuts, keep the one that delights.
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