rzen
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One written standard for every audience-facing word: concise, to the point, inspiring delight through specificity — with word budgets per copy type (reviews had drifted from a ~370-word median to 500-1000+). All writing skills now reference the charter, and daily-pipeline gains a stage-4 copy-edit pass: a subagent that didn't write the day's copy tightens it against the charter, prose only, diff reviewed before commit. Digest gains a copy-edit line. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01WZaczDJjL3xZ3u5spsN5AL
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Editorial voice charter
The standard for every audience-facing word on unique.rzen.dev — find bodies, review bodies, bundle blurbs and intros, subtitles, descriptions. Skills reference this file; the pipeline's copy-edit pass enforces it.
The voice in one line
Concise, to the point, and above all inspiring delight.
Principles
- 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.
- Lead with the virtue, not the category. The reader learns why it's wonderful before what shelf it sits on.
- 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.
- 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.
- Honest beats glossy. Limitations stated plainly; corrections from fact-checking called out when they're interesting. Trust is the site's only currency.
- 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.
Word budgets
| Copy | Budget |
|---|---|
| Find body | 40–90 words (2–3 sentences) |
| Review body | 250–450 words; hard ceiling 600 |
| Review — narrative subjects (travel, history, story-led) | up to ~800 when the story itself is the delight — it must earn every paragraph |
| Bundle blurb | one sentence |
| Bundle intro | 1–2 sentences |
| Subtitle / description | one line, no trailing period needed |
Budgets are ceilings, not targets — a 250-word review that says everything beats a 450-word one that pads.
For the copy editor
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.