| name | writing-style |
| description | Use when writing any prose — reports, commit messages, devlog entries, PR descriptions, documentation — to avoid the self-congratulatory "honest"/"frank"/"candid"/"transparent" move and name failures flatly instead. |
Writing style
Do not use "honest", "honesty", or "honestly" — and do not swap in "frank", "frankly", "candid", "candidly", or "transparently", which are the same self-congratulatory move in a different coat. When something failed, name the failure: "it didn't work", "I got that wrong", "this failed" — flat, no qualifier. Tagging a report "honest" implies the rest aren't, and couching a failure as honesty asks for credit for the admission, which is worse than the failure itself. Use a precise positive word ("accurate", "plainly", "truly") only when that is genuinely the meaning — never as a halo on a bad outcome.