compound-eng-writing（复合英语写作）

Human Writing

Core Principles

• Active voice: "We shipped the fix" not "The fix was shipped"
• Name the actor: Every sentence needs a human subject doing something. Inanimate objects don't fix bugs, shift cultures, or tell us anything -- a person does.
• Specific over vague: "Cut reporting from 4 hours to 15 minutes" not "Save time"
• Simple words: "Use" not "utilize", "help" not "facilitate", "start" not "initiate"
• Positive form: Say what it is, not what it isn't -- "Ignore" not "Do not pay attention to"
• Confident: Cut "almost", "very", "really", "quite", "arguably", and all -ly adverbs
• Concrete: Name the thing, state the number, cite the source
• Omit needless words: "Because" not "due to the fact that"; "Now" not "at this point in time"; "Can" not "has the ability to"
• Use contractions: "don't", "won't", "it's", "they're" -- uncontracted forms are a major AI tell
• Put the reader in the room: "You" beats "People." Specifics beat abstractions. Avoid narrating from a distance.

AI Patterns -- Kill on Sight

Vocabulary: delve, crucial, pivotal, foster, leverage, tapestry, testament, underscore, vibrant, landscape (abstract), shape (abstract, as in "previous shape" / "the shape of the problem"), interplay, multifaceted, enhance, enduring, garner, showcase, Additionally, seamless, robust, cutting-edge, groundbreaking, nestled, renowned

Structural tells:

• Rule of three: forced triads ("streamline, optimize, and enhance")
• Negative parallelism: "It's not just X -- it's Y" / "Not X. But Y." → state Y directly
• Superficial -ing phrases: "ensuring reliability", "showcasing features"
• Copula avoidance: "serves as", "stands as", "boasts" -- use "is", "has"
• Synonym cycling: four names for the same thing in four sentences
• False ranges: "from X to Y" where X and Y aren't on a meaningful scale
• Formulaic challenges: "Despite X, Y continues to thrive"
• Dramatic fragmentation: "[Noun]. That's it. That's the [thing]." -- performative simplicity
• Rhetorical setups: "What if I told you..." / "Think about it:" / "Here's what I mean:"
• Wh- sentence openers: sentences starting with What/When/Where/Which/Who/Why/How as filler. Restructure to lead with the subject or verb.
• Narrator-from-a-distance: "This happens because...", "People tend to...", "Nobody designed this." Put the reader in the room instead.
• Lazy extremes: every, always, never, everyone, nobody -- false authority. Use specifics instead of sweeping claims.
• Meta-commentary: "Hint:", "Plot twist:", "Spoiler:", "In this section, we'll...", "As we'll see...", "Let me walk you through..."

Formatting tells:

• Em dash overuse -- replace most with commas or periods
• Mechanical bold on every other phrase
• Emoji-decorated headers
• Bolded-header bullet lists (Thing: explanation of thing)
• Title Case In Every Heading Word -- use sentence case instead

Banned phrases -- delete and rewrite on sight. See references/phrases.md for the full list.

Core offenders:

• "In today's rapidly evolving landscape"
• "game-changer", "revolutionary", "transformative"
• "Moreover", "Furthermore", "Additionally" (as sentence starters)
• "It's worth noting that", "It is important to note that"
• "At the end of the day"
• "Here's the thing:" / "It turns out" / "Let me be clear" / "The uncomfortable truth is"
• "Full stop." / "Let that sink in." / "Make no mistake"
• "In order to" → "To" | "Due to the fact that" → "Because"
• Generic conclusions: "The future looks bright" → state the actual plan

Communication artifacts (remove entirely):

• "Great question!", "I hope this helps!", "Let me know if..."
• "As of my last update", "based on available information"
• Sycophantic openers and vague attributions ("Experts argue", "Industry reports suggest")

False Agency

AI avoids naming actors by giving inanimate things human verbs. Find the person; put them at the front of the sentence.

If no specific person fits, use "you" to put the reader in the seat. Person rules: use "you" when addressing the reader directly, "we" for organizational actions, "I" for personal voice. Avoid third-person passive ("it was decided") -- name the actor.

Quality Gate

Before delivering prose, run two checks:

Quick audit (binary, kill anything that triggers):

• Any adverbs? Kill them.
• Any passive voice? Find the actor, make them the subject.
• Inanimate thing doing a human verb? Name the person.
• "Not X, it's Y" contrast? State Y directly.
• Three consecutive sentences match length? Break one.
• Em-dash anywhere? Replace with comma or period.
• Vague declarative ("The implications are significant")? Name the specific implication.
• Meta-joiner ("The rest of this section...")? Delete. Let the text move.

Five-dimension scoring (rate 1-10 each):

Below 35/50: revise before delivering.

Long-form audit workflow -- for documents, essays, and research content, run a two-phase pass to avoid fix-as-you-go bias (fixing one tell while missing three others). This section reuses the vocabulary and structural tells from "AI Patterns -- Kill on Sight" above but adds named tags for tracking and a structured fix table. Short-form edits can use the Kill-on-Sight list directly; long-form audits should use the tag-based workflow below.

*Phase 1 -- Audit*: Read the full text without changing anything. Quote the shortest offending snippet (≤12 words) and append every applicable tag. Stack tags if multiple tells land in one sentence. One numbered line per offense. End with — END AUDIT: [n] issues found —. If zero, write — AUDIT COMPLETE: 0 issues — and skip Phase 2.

Tag vocabulary (extend the earlier prose rules with these named IDs):

Severity suffixes when tagging: +H for high severity (strong tell or compound patterns), +S for structural (affects document structure, not just wording).

*Phase 2 -- Rewrite*: Correct tagged items in a single pass using the fix table below. Preserve everything not flagged; no scope creep. Verify no new tells were introduced during rewriting.

For documents with references or citations, also tag: [OAICITE] (malformed AI citation artifacts), [LINK-ROT] (dead or placeholder URLs), [ISBN-DOI-FAIL] (invalid identifiers), [REF-BUG] (misformatted references, wrong numbering, dangling footnotes). See references/audit-workflow.md for the full procedure.

Output format:

## AUDIT
1. "quoted snippet" [TAG] [TAG +H]
2. "quoted snippet" [TAG]
...
— END AUDIT: [n] issues found —

## CORRECTED TEXT
[full corrected text]

## CHANGELOG
- Line/section: brief description of change
- Line/section: brief description of change

Voice

• Have opinions -- react to facts, don't just report them
• Vary rhythm -- short sentences, then longer ones. Mix it up.
• Acknowledge complexity -- "impressive but also unsettling" beats "impressive"
• Use first person when appropriate -- "I keep coming back to..." signals a real person
• Be specific about feelings -- not "this is concerning" but name what unsettles you
• Let some mess in -- fragments ("Because that's real."), conjunction starters ("But that changes everything."), parentheticals (thinking mid-sentence) -- all signal a human drafting, not generating

Composition

• One paragraph, one topic. Lead with the topic sentence.
• Keep related words together. Place emphatic words at end of sentence.
• Don't join independent clauses with a comma. Don't break sentences in two.
• Beginning participial phrase must refer to the grammatical subject.
• Match tone to context: casual for blogs, precise for docs, direct for UI text.

Self-Check

Short-form (commits, PR descriptions, comments): checks 1-4 only. Long-form (blog posts, docs, essays): run the full Quality Gate above, then checks 1-5.

1. Read every sentence aloud. If it sounds like a press release, Wikipedia, or chatbot -- rewrite.
2. Ctrl-F the banned-phrases list. Zero matches required.
3. Check for false agency: any inanimate thing performing a human verb? Name the person.
4. Check for em dash overuse, mechanical bold, and synonym cycling.
5. Cut quotables: if a sentence sounds like a pull-quote or aphorism, rewrite it.

Changelog Voice

• Sell test: every bullet should pass "would a user reading this think 'I want to try that'?" Lead with what the user can now *do*, not implementation details. "You can now filter by date range" not "Refactored the query builder to support date predicates"
• User-facing vs internal: internal changes (refactors, dependency bumps, CI fixes) belong in a separate "For contributors" subsection, not mixed with user-facing bullets
• Verb tense: past tense for what changed ("Added", "Fixed"), not present ("Adds", "Fixes")

PR / MR Descriptions

For pull-request and merge-request descriptions, match length to change complexity (1 sentence for trivial, full narrative for architecturally significant). Lead with Before / After / Scope rationale; describe net end state, not iteration journey; pick Mermaid for topology, tables for grids. See references/pr-descriptions.md for the sizing matrix, narrative frame, GitHub-specific hazards (#NN auto-link trap), and the self-check list.

See references/examples.md for before/after transformations.