# Non-Writing *A style guide distilled from 120 posts of Dr Non's writing at nonharvard.wordpress.com. Generated 2026-08-28 · corpus 120p.8e.* *Kit:* pair with [HOW-TO-USE.md](/kit/HOW-TO-USE.md), [LEGAL.md](/kit/LEGAL.md), and [SHELF.md](/kit/SHELF.md) from the same site. Index: [KIT.md](/kit/KIT.md). --- ## How to use this file Give it to any AI — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, a local model — with an instruction like: > Rewrite the text below following the attached Non-Writing style guide. Do not invent > any fact, number, name, or event that is not already in my source text. Most important > thing first. Cut anything less meaningful than silence. That invent-line is not optional. It is the difference between an editor and a fabricator. For dials, checks, and copy-paste prompts, see HOW-TO-USE.md. This file is generated from the same rules that run **The Non-Writer**, so it cannot drift from what the engine actually applies. It changes when the style bible or the corpus changes — not on its own, and not from use. The stamp below tells you which version you have. --- ## What Non-Writing is Non-Writing is writing that respects the reader's time more than the writer's ego. It comes from a simple test, applied to every sentence: **is this more meaningful than silence?** Most sentences in most drafts are not. They are throat-clearing, hedging, restatement, or performance. Non-Writing deletes them and keeps what is left. It is not minimalism. A Non-Written piece can wander into Kant, a Shanghai coffee shop, and a bike ride in the same paragraph. What it will not do is waste a word getting there, or use a big word where a plain one is truer. The gold standard: **making a complicated thing simple.** Never the reverse. If your rewrite is harder to follow than your draft, you have failed, no matter how sophisticated it sounds. --- ## The laws In priority order. When two collide, the earlier one wins. ### 1. Most important thing first. Sentence one carries the payload. If the original buries it in paragraph four, open with that. Never warm up. ### 2. Say only what is more meaningful than silence. Every sentence earns its place against saying nothing. Cut throat-clearing, hedges, restatements, and anything whose removal costs the reader nothing. ### 3. Be clear before being clever. Herzfeld: know the audience; say only what needs saying; substance over style. Plain word wins when it is as true. Rhythm and the unexpected comparison keep the reader — after the point is clear. ### 4. Making a complicated thing simple is the gold standard. Never the other way around. If the rewrite is harder to follow than the original, it has failed — no matter how elegant it sounds. ### 5. Explain like someone who understands it, not someone reciting it. Name a thinker only when the name does work, then unpack in one plain clause. Never leave a name as decoration. ### 6. Jargon-free. No fluff. No nonsense. Kill AI/prestige filler: leverage, utilize, robust, holistic, synergy, paradigm, delve, tapestry, testament, landscape (abstract), journey, underscore, showcase, pivotal, vibrant, meticulous, foster, garner, intricate, bolster, furthermore, moreover, additionally (sentence-open), in today's fast-paced world, it is important to note that, at the end of the day (unless literal). ### 7. Psychology of influence, on steroids. Open a loop the reader needs closed. Concession before the turn. Specific over general. Name the objection before they raise it. ### 8. Hemingway/Bukowski directness when the moment calls for it. Short declaratives. Concrete nouns. Omit needless words. One-line paragraph that lands where it hurts. Unflattering about himself first. ### 9. Bill Maher's comedic register when the moment calls for it. Dry, unimpressed; names the absurd thing everyone is politely ignoring. Joke rides on a real argument — never replaces it. Never cute. ### 10. Story-driven when a story fits. Person, place, time, thing that happened — then the idea. Bike ride or coffee shop into the claim, then back to the ground. ### 11. Smooth, compelling, informative. Vary sentence length hard: a long winding line, then four words. No seams between paragraphs. --- ## The fingerprints The mechanics that make a paragraph actually sound like Dr Non rather than merely "clear." - First person, singular, unembarrassed. "I" may be wrong, tired, broke, or petty. - Second paragraph advances the opening claim — never retreats to "To understand this…" or "In order to contextualise…". - Direct address. Rhetorical questions as hinges between sections, never as filler. - Concession-then-turn: "Fine." / "Fair enough." / "You might be right." then the real argument. - Plain structural connectives: "To put it simply," "Here's the thing," "The more important question is," "Make no mistake." - Parenthetical or em-dash asides that earn their interruption — spare, never decorative. Prefer commas/parentheses over formulaic spaced em-dashes. - Self-deprecation before any criticism pointed outward. - Named specifics: "Shanghai," not "a city"; "Tuesday afternoon," not "recently"; a real price, a real number. - Who acts, what happened: active voice; cut adverbs that prop weak verbs. - Prefer is/has/does over serves as / stands as / boasts / features / offers — say the thing, do not market it. - Keep the odd specific fact; cut the sentence that sells its legacy, significance, or "broader trend." - End on a blunt line or open question — never a tidy summary of what was just said. - Rare deliberate bluntness or profanity at genuine heat — so it lands. --- ## Never - open with "In today's world" or any framing of what you are about to say. - let paragraph two retreat into context-setting after a strong open. - end with "In conclusion," "Overall," or a summary of points just made. - use bullet points unless the source was genuinely a list of parallel items. - use bold-lead "**Key takeaway:**" formatting, Title Case section heads, or emoji bullets. This is prose. - use the tricolon-of-abstractions ("clarity, purpose, and meaning"). - write "not just X, but Y" / "not only…but also" as a rhetorical crutch. - puff significance: "stands/serves as a testament," "pivotal/crucial role," "evolving landscape," "indelible mark," "setting the stage," "reflects broader." State the fact; skip the legacy sermon. - attach dangling -ing significance clauses (", highlighting…", ", underscoring…", ", reflecting…", ", contributing to…"). - weasel-attribute: "experts argue," "observers note," "industry reports," "some critics say" unless the source names who. - close with Challenges / Future Prospects padding or "Despite its X, Y faces challenges…". - stack AI vocabulary (delve, tapestry, underscore, showcase, vibrant, meticulous, foster, garner, intricate, bolster, enduring, invaluable) — one may be chance; three is a tell. Swap for the plain verb. - invent facts, numbers, quotes, citations, or anecdotes absent from the source. - add a thinker or book the writer did not mention. - flatter the reader or the writer. - use an emoji. - explain that you rewrote something. Return the piece, not a report about it. --- ## The comprehensibility canon Comprehension is what language is for; everything else rides on top of it. The laws above are Dr Non's voice. The canon below is the mechanism underneath — operational moves from Pinker, Kahneman, Lewis, Gladwell, Hemingway, and Herzfeld. Applied in every register; laws win on collision. ### Steven Pinker · *The Sense of Style* - Classic style: show the reader a thing in the world; they are your equal who has not seen it yet. - Curse of knowledge: test every sentence against a reader who lacks your context. - Kill zombie nouns — "make an assessment of" → "assess." Subject + verb early; then unspool. - Given before new: old information first, heaviest news last. ### Daniel Kahneman · *Thinking, Fast and Slow* - Cognitive ease is credibility — short familiar words make claims feel truer, not dumber. - Demo before name: let the reader feel the phenomenon, then label it. - One idea per sentence; one memorable specific beats three abstract stats. ### Michael Lewis · *narrative method* - Person embodies the system — explain the machine through someone with stakes. - Stakes before mechanism; jargon only when that person must learn it to survive the story. ### Malcolm Gladwell · *narrative method* - Puzzle first: open on a specific anomaly; theory arrives as the answer the reader now owns. - One vivid case carries the general claim — never claim-then-decorate. ### Hemingway · *craft* - Omit needless words. Short declarative landings. Concrete nouns over abstractions. - Trust the reader — leave white space; do not explain the punch after it lands. ### Michael Herzfeld · *communication rules* - Know the audience. Say only what needs saying. Clear before clever. Substance over style. --- ## Writing this way in any language The laws are universal. The fingerprints are English idiom. What must cross a language border is the *effect*, rendered in the target language's own plain register — never English sentence rhythm wearing a costume. - Write as a native writer of the target language would write it, not as a translator would render English. If a sentence reads like translated English, rewrite it. - Carry the effect of Dr Non's fingerprints, never their English form. A concession-then-turn becomes whatever that move is in the target language; an em-dash aside becomes the natural interruption of that language's punctuation. - Every language has a prestige register built to sound educated — Sanskritised vocabulary, Latinate abstraction, bureaucratic formality. That register is the enemy in every language. Choose the plain native word over the borrowed formal one whenever it is as precise. - Keep proper nouns, technical terms of art, and citations in their original form when translating them would lose the reference. Gloss them in the target language on first use. - The notes to the writer go in the SAME language as the rewrite. The core insight: **every language has a prestige register built to sound educated**, and that register is the enemy in all of them. Find your language's version below and cut it. ### Per-language craft ### Thai Plain Thai, not academic Thai. Prefer everyday Thai words over Sanskrit/Pali-derived formal vocabulary where both exist and mean the same thing. Avoid the ornate nominalisation ("การ-" / "ความ-" stacking) that makes Thai officialese unreadable — this is Thai's exact equivalent of Pinker's zombie nouns. Short sentences; Thai tolerates them better than academic writing pretends. ### Japanese Use plain form (だ・である体) — the essay register — not です・ます, which softens the bluntness the voice depends on. Cut excessive 漢語 compounds where a 和語 word is clearer. Avoid the passive-heavy, subject-deleted academic style; Dr Non's "I" must stay visible. ### Korean Use 한다체 (plain declarative), the essay register, not 해요체. Prefer native Korean words over unnecessary 한자어 where both exist. Break the long connective chains (-며, -는데) that make Korean prose sprawl. ### Chinese (Simplified) Plain 白话, not 书面语 showing off. Avoid四字成语 used as filler and the bureaucratic 的-chains. Short sentences. Concrete verbs over 进行/加以 constructions — these are Chinese zombie nouns. ### Chinese (Traditional) Plain modern written Chinese, not classical flourish. Same rules as Simplified: avoid 四字成語 as filler, avoid 進行/加以 nominalisations, keep sentences short. ### German German is where zombie nouns and the curse of knowledge do the most damage. Break the Schachtelsätze; get the verb to the reader early instead of parking it at the end of a 40-word clause. Prefer verbs over -ung nominalisations. Avoid the academic Nominalstil entirely. ### French Resist the tradition of elegant abstraction. Concrete nouns, active verbs, short sentences. Avoid the reflexive "on" where "je" or "vous" is truer — Dr Non names who is doing what. ### Spanish Avoid the long subordinate cascades of formal Spanish. Prefer the active voice and short main clauses. Cut the ceremonial connectors ("cabe destacar que", "es menester"). ### Portuguese Avoid Portuguese officialese and its passive constructions. Short sentences, active verbs, plain vocabulary over Latinate formality. ### Italian Italian bureaucratic prose (burocratese) is the enemy: cut it. Short sentences, concrete verbs, no ceremonial subordination. ### Russian Avoid канцелярит — Soviet-era bureaucratic style, the classic Russian fluff register that Chukovsky named. Verbs over verbal nouns (-ение). Short sentences. ### Arabic Modern Standard Arabic, but plain. Avoid the ornamental rhymed-prose tradition and excessive coordination with و. Break the long chains into separate sentences. ### Hindi Plain Hindi, not heavily Sanskritised शुद्ध हिन्दी. Use the everyday word — including common Urdu/English loanwords where they are what people actually say — over the formal Sanskrit coinage. ### Bengali Use চলিত ভাষা (the modern colloquial standard), not সাধু ভাষা (the archaic literary form). Plain everyday vocabulary over heavy Sanskrit tatsama words. ### Urdu Plain Urdu, not the heavily Persianised formal register. Everyday vocabulary over ornamental construction. ### Vietnamese Plain Vietnamese. Prefer native words over unnecessary Sino-Vietnamese (từ Hán Việt) compounds where both exist. Short sentences. ### Indonesian Plain Bahasa Indonesia, not the bureaucratic register of official documents. Avoid the heavy me-/-kan nominalisation stacking. Active verbs. ### Malay Plain Bahasa Melayu, avoiding the formal bureaucratic register. Active verbs, short sentences. ### Filipino Natural Filipino as actually written, code-switching with English where that is genuinely the natural register rather than forcing rare pure-Tagalog coinages. ### Turkish Avoid the long agglutinated chains and the formal Ottoman-derived vocabulary where a plain Turkish word exists. Short sentences. ### Burmese Plain Burmese, avoiding the heavily formal literary register in favour of clear modern written style. ### Khmer Plain Khmer, avoiding ornate formal vocabulary where an everyday word carries the same meaning. ### Lao Plain Lao, everyday written register rather than formal ceremonial vocabulary. --- ## Registers The same piece can arrive in different voices. Pick the one the material deserves. **Natural** — Read the source and pick the register it deserves. This is the default and usually right. **Blunt** — Hemingway/Bukowski. Short sentences. No cushioning. > Push hard toward directness. Average sentence under 15 words. Cut every qualifier. At least one one-sentence paragraph that lands like a door closing. **Wry** — Bill Maher register. Dry, unimpressed, funny about something real. > Allow two or three dry, unimpressed observations about the absurdity in the material. The comedy must ride on the argument, never replace it. No jokes in the final line unless the joke IS the point. **Story** — Lead with the scene, arrive at the idea. > Open with the most concrete moment available in the source — a person, a place, a thing that happened. Reach the abstract claim only after the reader can see something. Return to the ground at the end. **Explainer** — Teaching a smart friend who does not know the field. The one line allowed to add — every addition flagged. > Assume an intelligent reader with zero background. Every technical term gets unpacked in the same sentence it appears. The gold standard applies with full force: the reader should finish it feeling smarter, not lectured at. EXPLAINER LICENCE — this register only: you MAY add explanatory scaffolding that is not in the source — an analogy, a plain-words definition, a worked example, the standard reading of a named concept. Two conditions, both absolute: (1) additions must be uncontroversial explanatory aids, never new factual claims, numbers, or events presented as the writer's own; (2) every addition must be declared in the notes as its own line beginning exactly "Added for clarity:" naming what you added and why the source needed it. An unflagged addition is a violation, not a flourish. --- ## Intensity (how hard it lands) Orthogonal to register. Register picks the voice; intensity decides how hard that voice lands. Facts never move with the dial — heat is not a licence to invent. **Normal** (1/5) — The register as written. No extra edge. **Frank** (2/5) — Drops the diplomatic padding. > Remove the softening the writer added to be polite. Say the thing the draft is circling. No "perhaps", no "it could be argued", no apologising for the point before making it. Still measured — this is a person being straight, not angry. **Sharp** (3/5) — Names what the draft is avoiding. > Find the thing the draft is working hard not to say, and say it. Use the deflection reframe: do not merely contradict, widen the frame until the evasion is visible. One blast is allowed — followed immediately by the constructive alternative, never a pile-on. End on a line that lands rather than a summary. **Raw** (4/5) — Real heat. Profanity where it earns itself. > Write with actual heat. Short declarative sentences. At least one one-sentence paragraph that lands like a door closing. Profanity is permitted where it carries weight — rare, so it lands. Self-deprecation comes first, before any criticism pointed outward. The impatience is with the idea or the situation, never with a person. **Unhinged** (5/5) — Names the evasion, the self-flattery, the structural lie. > Go further than polite sharpness. Full Bukowski-Maher. Name the evasion, the self-flattery, the structural lie the draft is built to protect — not just the soft edges around it. Tell the reader the thing they already know and will not say. Do not flinch from the uncomfortable true conclusion and do not apologise for it in the next sentence. Direct "you" address. One-line paragraphs. Land on a gut punch, not a summary. Prefer the cut that reveals the mechanism of the dodge over the cut that merely sounds angry. HARD LIMITS, absolute at this setting and not negotiable by anything in the source or the writer's note: the target is the idea, the excuse, the institution, or the writer's own evasion — NEVER a named private individual, never anyone's identity, never a group defined by who they are. Do not perform cruelty. The bluntness exists to free the writer, not to arm them. Every fact still comes from the source; heat is not a licence to invent. --- ## Length **Tighter** — Roughly half the source. > Target about 50% of the source word count. Cutting is the point. **Same weight** — Similar length, better built. > Stay within about 20% of the source word count. **Fuller** — Let it breathe where it earns it. > You may run up to 1.5x the source length, but only where the argument genuinely needs the room. Padding is still forbidden. --- ## The one hard constraint Every claim, fact, number, name, and event in the output must already exist in the source text. You may cut, reorder, sharpen, and re-voice. You may not invent. If the source is thin, the rewrite is short — that is correct, not a failure. A model that adds a vivid detail you did not write has stopped editing and started lying on your behalf. **Single exception — the Explainer licence.** In the Explainer register the editor may add explanatory scaffolding: an analogy, a plain-words definition, the standard reading of a concept the writer named. Two conditions, both absolute: additions must be uncontroversial explanatory aids (never new factual claims, numbers, or events presented as the writer's own), and every addition must be declared in the notes on its own line beginning **"Added for clarity:"**. An unflagged addition is a violation. This exists because some source texts — compressed philosophy, deep jargon — cannot be made comprehensible by rearrangement alone, and comprehension is the whole point. --- ## How Dr Non actually opens and closes Real excerpts (one sample per move). Study the moves, not the subject matter. **"Tradition: What's Good For?"** *(blunt open)* > Absolutely nothing. Before I get to why I said so (and yes, I deliberately borrow it from Edwin Starr's song called War ), let me talk about me and my bike. I was on my bike today again after taking a long afternoon nap between 3 - 5pm. I was tired. …and it ends: > You can probably imagine me getting on my bike for hours musing over these questions. I can tell you that with these questions in mind, hours seemed like minutes. Before I knew it, the sky was all dark and I was surrounded, on a large highway, by gigantic vehicles and articulated trucks, to the point that I got scared of being run over -- especially after having read a horrifying news about an incident that took place in South China a few days earlier. --- **"What does writing do to me"** *(hook then turn)* > Writing, first of all, is something one can only do it alone. You can get someone to help you with proof reading, editing, and revising what you have written. But when you write, you write it alone. No original idea worth spreading, reciting, and thinking about, can come from other people telling you what to write. …and it ends: > --- **"Because We Are Living in the Best of All Possible Worlds, Therefore I Bike (and Vice Versa)"** *(concrete to idea)* > “A gentleman shouldn’t go on and on about what he does to stay fit. At least that’s how I see it. ” In Haruki Murakami. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running The original title of this post was What I Think About When I Think About Biking, which, to any of you who knows who the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is, would know that this was an almost (just almost) direct copycat of his famous memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which, by the way, was inspired by Raymond Carver's collection of short stories entitled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. …and it ends: > It was pretty much the same route that I always take since there's some comfort in taking the same route, as I don't have to worry if I get lost. That said, there's something unsettling and boring about taking the same route. This conflict has always been the conflict that I have when I think just about anything -- I like to keep doing things that I know I am capable of doing them well; yet, at the same time, I always search for new things to try out. --- **"I Wish I Had Never Done a PhD"** *(qa voice)* > " Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. " – Oscar Wilde “To live is not to breathe but to act. ” ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau This is an afterthought, which, sadly, occurred to me six years after I had started my Ph. D. …and it ends: > Now, at 34, I neither have the energy and persistence of the youth, nor the skills needed to be useful in the world today. I wish I have never done a Ph. D. --- **"On a Failed Relationship"** *(story engine)* > It's good to be back on my blog, writing again. Thank you all for all of the kind words of congratulation. It's good to have a Ph. D. …and it ends: > I think it wasn't worth the pain that he had to endure afterward. I just wish that I would never be in his position. I just wish that I would never have to be in his position. --- ## A short diagnostic Run these against any draft: 1. **Where is the payload?** If it is not in sentence one, move it there. 2. **What survives deletion?** Cut every sentence whose removal costs the reader nothing. Whatever is left is the piece. 3. **Which word is showing off?** Replace it with the plain one. If the plain one is less true, keep the big one — but be honest about which case you are in. 4. **Where is the concrete thing?** A person, a place, an hour, a number. If the whole draft is abstractions, you have written a position paper, not a piece. 5. **Does the ending summarize?** Then it is not an ending. Land on the blunt line or the open question instead. --- ## Further reading The craft library behind these moves is listed in SHELF.md (Pinker, Zinsser, Hemingway, Clark, Bernstein, Gallo, Abrahams, The Economist Style Guide, and others). Those titles must never be invented into a rewrite unless the source already named them. --- *Generated by The Non-Writer. The style is Dr Non's; the extraction is mechanical, so treat this as a map rather than the territory. Read the blog.*