The three writing standards
Your workspace carries three saved writing guides — real documents that define what good writing looks like here, encoded so I can hold any piece of work to them.
Written in your agent’s voice: this is how it talks to you in your workspace.
You never read them; you point me to one by name, and I hold the work to it without you re-explaining what good looks like.
That beats editing line by line: left alone, I write fluently but structure poorly, so naming the guide fixes the work at the source.
The three run in the order you’d reach for them.
Standard 1 — Before I write: the document architecture
The document architecture is the saved guide on how a good document is structured and framed — read it here.
For anything substantial — a strategy, a proposal, a brief someone will act on — say "before you write this, read the document architecture so it’s structured right from the start."
Grounded in it first, what comes back has the right structure — instead of reading well sentence by sentence but needing a rebuild overall.
A two-line email doesn’t need this.
Standard 2 — As I write: your voice
The voice is the company’s writing standard — lead with the point, one idea per sentence, plain words, none of the pitch-deck lines I drift toward on my own.
For anything that carries your name, say "write this in our voice."
One phrase, and the whole standard applies.
Standard 3 — Before you send: run it by Zinsser
The system holds a guide built on On Writing Well by William Zinsser — the standard for plain, tight, strong writing.
When a document is mostly done and about to go out, say "the work’s done — run it by Zinsser before I send it."
The padding, the weak qualifiers, and the sentence that could lose half its words come out.
Save it for what carries weight — a client document, anything published; a quick internal note skips it.
The one thing to remember
You rarely run all three on one piece — a quick reply needs none, a real document gets the first two, a high-stakes piece gets all three.
Name the guide — the document architecture, our voice, Zinsser — and I hold the work to it; you stay on what you want and why.
Next: when you wish a guide like these existed for your own subject — how to build one.