Earned exceptions
Loaded from SKILL.md steps 3 and 5. Every register entry fires on a shape, and a shape sometimes carries a claim. Before deleting a flagged construction, find its row and check which column the instance sits in.
Staging shapes, entries 1 to 23 and 37:
| Shape | Banned when | Earned when |
|---|---|---|
| "X rather than Y" (2) | You invented Y so you could reject it | The reader was genuinely holding Y — the draft proposed it, or it is the field's default |
| "Nobody noticed" (3) | Unfalsifiable claim about others' inattention | You can name the mechanism and duration: "nobody noticed for six weeks because the dashboard only alarms on nulls" |
| Isolated one-line paragraph (9) | Gravitas beat | Real pivot: new actor, category shift, time jump |
| Colon before the payload (8) | Withholding for a beat | The payload is a list, a definition, or a code block |
| Short declarative closer (12) | Compresses the section into a moral | States a fact: "Default retries are back to 3." |
| Em dash (16) | The dash stages a beat before the punch | A genuine inline aside, or the author's sample uses them at that rate |
| Metaphor (6, 37) | It dresses a mechanism you could name | It is the clearest available description and no plain noun fits |
Encyclopedic shapes, entries 24 to 36:
| Shape | Banned when | Earned when |
|---|---|---|
| Participle tail (25) | The tail asserts significance the sentence has not earned | The clause carries a sourced claim — make it its own sentence rather than cutting it |
| Forced triad (26) | The count came from rhythm | There are genuinely three things, or a superlative or ranking rides on the phrasing |
| Elegant variation (27) | The same referent renamed for variety | The second term names a genuinely different thing |
| False range (28) | X and Y are not endpoints of any scale | A real range with real endpoints |
| Inline-header list (29) | The label restates the item | The label is a real index: a term being defined, an option name, a case name |
| Typographic tells (30) | Bold, emoji or Title Case scattered mechanically | Bold on a term at first use; the document already uses emoji; a house style requires Title Case |
Reference-prose shapes, entries 39 to 42:
| Shape | Banned when | Earned when |
|---|---|---|
| Welded epigram (39) | The second clause restates the first as a maxim | Both clauses carry distinct facts a reader can act on |
| Latinate state verb (40) | Register formality for a program doing nothing | The word is the system's own documented state — a queue whose states are waiting and held |
| Nominalized header (41) | It names a topic area instead of the content | The noun is a term this document defines, standing alone as its label — "Overcorrection", "Provenance" |
| Filler and hedging (32) | Hedges stack and none names a condition | One hedge names a real condition: "on the two runs that finished" |
| Diff-anchored (34) | The doc narrates the change that produced it | The document is version-scoped by design: changelogs, release notes, migration guides |
| Subjectless fragment (35) | The actor is known and matters | The register is clipped throughout — release notes, a feature table, a CLI help string |
| Predicate hyphenation (36) | Every pair is hyphenated in both positions | House style or a quoted source sets it |
Flat-certainty shapes, entries 43 to 47:
| Shape | Banned when | Earned when |
|---|---|---|
| Flat-certainty adverb (43) | It asserts the reader's reaction — "provably safe", "quietly dropped" | It names a contrast the reader can check: "silently" against a version that logs |
| Juridical vocabulary (44) | A program state described as an adjudication | It is the system's own documented word — a policy engine whose API says deny |
| Verification compound (45) | The method is compressed into an adjective and never shown | The number is beside it: "byte-identical" next to the diff, "mutation-checked" next to 14 of 15 |
| Privative coinage (46) | A minted adjective replaces the measurement | The field's term ("unsatisfiable"), or the absence is the finding and stated once |
| Exhaustive negation (47) | A universal negative stands in for the search | The scope is bounded and named: "none of the 46 chunks exceeds 0.57%" |
Confiding-essayist shapes, entries 48 to 52:
| Shape | Banned when | Earned when |
|---|---|---|
| Announced candour (48) | Sincerity claimed for a sentence that could have carried it | Reported speech, or one "to be clear" correcting a misreading the draft caused |
| Stranded auxiliary (49) | The verb is elided so the clause lands as a beat | Both halves are measured — "reads passed on all 12 shards, writes on none" |
| Retroactive significance (50) | It grades a passage the reader has already read | A "which is why" introducing a consequence the reader has not seen |
| Totalizing designation (51) | A part is claimed as the whole, or a superlative ranks an unnamed set | A real count of one over a named set — "the only one of the six runs that finished" |
| Obituary headline (52) | A verdict borrowed from a form built to overstate | The phrase belongs to something quoted or named |