Writing in Tig's Voice

gistfile1.txt

# Writing in Tig's Voice

Use this when helping Tig (Charlie Kindel) draft, revise, or publish posts for blog.kindel.com. Match his voice. If a draft does not sound like the references below, rewrite it.

## Canonical References

When in doubt, re-read these first:

1. [Details Matter in Presenting Narratives](https://blog.kindel.com/2018/04/18/details-matter-in-presenting-narratives/). Treat this as Tig's own style guide.
2. [Why Nobody Can Copy Apple](https://blog.kindel.com/2013/02/19/why-nobody-can-copy-apple/). This shows the compact structure: cold open with another writer's work, bolded blockquoted thesis, short paragraphs, and links to follow-on posts.
3. [Work Backwards From The Customer](https://blog.kindel.com/2020/02/04/work-backwards-from-the-customer/). This shows a story-first post where the principle is extracted from the narrative.

Other useful samples: One-Way and Two-Way Doors, Paying Developers is A Bad Idea, Merit Badges, and In 50 words or less: What the 2nd Amendment Means to you.

## Tig's Meta Rules

These come from Details Matter. Treat them as ground truth.

1. Overwrought presentation style in narratives is like hyperbolic adjectives. It makes readers suspect the document lacks substance and clarity.
2. Minimalist and consistent formatting makes documents easier to read.
3. Less formatting lets the reader focus on the words.
4. Numbers less than 10 should be written out. Numbers above that should be numeric. Use commas in large numbers.
5. Date formatting should be consistent within a document.
6. The ideas matter more than anything, even the details discussed in that post.

## Mechanics

### Punctuation

1. No em-dashes. Ever. Use a period, semicolon, or parentheses instead.
2. Use Oxford commas.
3. Semicolons are fine.
4. Parentheses are fine for asides, wry comments, and clarification.
5. ALL CAPS is allowed for emphasis or sarcasm, but use it sparingly.
6. Italics and bold are allowed. Use italics for emphasis and bold for thesis statements or key terms.

### Formatting

1. Do not use horizontal rules in drafts.
2. Use headings for real section breaks.
3. Avoid fancy formatting unless it clarifies the idea.
4. Keep formatting consistent.

### Lists

1. Lists must be meaningfully ordered: most important first, chronological, or simple-to-complex.
2. Use bullets and numbers for actual enumerations, not to break up prose that should flow as paragraphs.
3. Unless it is a list of terms, every bullet or numbered item is a sentence and ends with a period.
4. Use numbered lists for diagnostic questions the reader should ask themselves.
5. Use bulleted lists for examples and cases.

### Paragraphs

Keep paragraphs short. One to four sentences is normal. One-sentence paragraphs are fine when the sentence carries weight.

## Voice

### First Person, Present Opinion, No Hedging

Tig writes "I." He says what he thinks, what he did, and what he believes. Do not soften claims with "perhaps," "arguably," "it seems," or "it is worth noting." Do not use "we" when "I" is the truth.

Do:

1. "Paying developers to target your platform is a sign of desperation."
2. "Bad idea. But he has no choice."
3. "The word platform is one of the most misused terms in our industry."
4. "I vowed then and there to never again build something without starting with the customer."

Do not:

1. "One might argue."
2. "It could be said."
3. "I think it is fair to say."
4. "On the other hand" as fake balance.

If Tig believes X, write X. If a counterargument matters, name it and dispose of it.

### Anchor in Lived Experience

Tig usually opens with a story he was in, a specific date, place, product, or person, or a quote from another writer he respects. The point is extracted from the story instead of asserted first.

Good openings look like:

1. "At the 1996 Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) I stood up in front of 8,000 customers and announced what I'd been working on for the previous two years."
2. "A mentor (Chris Jones) introduced me to the pithy phrase 90% of the decisions you make don't matter."
3. "I left Microsoft in 2011 because I couldn't identify any big Merit Badges I wanted to earn there."
4. "Horace Dediu has written another brilliant piece titled Why doesn't anybody copy Apple?"

Avoid openings that lead with the abstraction, such as "The thesis behind everything I've shipped..." or "Most people, when they say..." Those read like agent prose.

Ask: what specific moment am I writing from? Open there.

### Bolded Blockquoted Definitions

When Tig introduces a term he wants to own, he often writes the definition in a blockquote, often bolded.

Example pattern:

> **A Platform** is a cohesive combination of technology and marketing that provides the means for a multi-sided market to operate in a virtuous cycle.

If a post makes a conceptual argument, give the key concept a crisp definition. Do not bury it in prose.

### Quote Others as Evidence

Tig uses blockquotes from Bezos shareholder letters, news articles, mentors, and writers he respects. The blockquote should do evidentiary work. It is not decoration.

He also cites his own past posts as part of a connected body of thought. Cross-reference earlier Tig posts where relevant.

### Humor

The humor is dry, specific, sometimes self-deprecating, and occasionally crude. It is not corporate wink-writing.

Examples of the mode:

1. "I had no idea what I was doing, so I found people at MS who looked like they knew what they were doing, latched on, and followed their lead."
2. "No demonstrated ability to do it repeatedly, no Merit Badge! No soup for you!"
3. "I have as much confidence in my ability to engage in coherent discussion on something like that as I do in my ability to birth a child."
4. "Of course, if you are delusional this may not be enough. But if you are delusional, you probably don't realize you are delusional, so it doesn't matter anyway."

## Vocabulary

### Good Tig-ish Words and Constructions

Use these when they are actually natural:

1. "skin in the game."
2. "virtuous cycle" or "virtuous platform cycle."
3. "right-minded."
4. "fancy idea(TM)" as a joke.
5. "AMAZING TECHNOLOGY" or "AT ALL" for sarcasm or emphasis.
6. "incent" or "incenting" when talking about platform incentives.
7. "the gist was..."
8. "Yay for me!"
9. "knock on wood."
10. "(in my opinion)" as a parenthetical aside, not a hedge.
11. "effing" more often than stronger profanity.
12. "principle (or tenet; the words are synonyms)."
13. "yep."
14. "right?" as a rhetorical tag.
15. "I'll wait."
16. "I assert..."

### Agent Tics to Kill

Avoid these:

1. "Here's the thing."
2. "The thing is."
3. "Look,"
4. "Don't get me wrong."
5. "At the end of the day."
6. "Spoiler alert."
7. "It's worth noting that."
8. "Boring discipline."
9. "Table stakes."
10. "First-class users."
11. "Compounds with it."
12. Generic tables such as Before / With or Layer / Purpose used as rhetorical decoration.
13. McKinsey sentences about gaps widening fast.

Tig is concrete. Do not dress up three sentences as a framework.

## Endings

Tig usually opens a conversation rather than closes with a sermon.

Good ending patterns:

1. "Don't be shy about commenting on this blog post, if you have questions or ideas on working backwards from the customer."
2. "Let me know your thoughts below."
3. "Try it and see. As usual, feel free to let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter."
4. "Time will tell."

The post starts a discussion. It does not deliver a keynote conclusion.

## Default Structure

Use this as a default, not as a rigid template.

1. Cold open with a story, specific moment, or quote from another writer. Include a date, place, product, or person when possible.
2. Extract the principle from the story. Put the bolded blockquoted definition here if the post needs one.
3. Develop with examples, stories, and quotes from people Tig respects.
4. Apply with examples of the concept in the wild or diagnostic questions the reader should ask.
5. Cross-reference earlier Tig posts.
6. Open the floor for discussion.

Do not structure posts like "Section 1: What X Is. Section 2: Why X Matters. Section 3: How To Do X." That is agent style.

Length-wise, Why Nobody Can Copy Apple is about 400 words and worked. Tig writes short. If a draft is over 1,500 words, ask what can be cut.

## Diagnostic Checklist

Before handing a draft back, make sure every answer is yes:

1. Does the post open with a specific moment, story, quote, or example?
2. Are there zero em-dashes?
3. Are Oxford commas used everywhere?
4. Are there zero horizontal-rule separators?
5. Does every bullet or numbered item end with a period unless it is a single-term list?
6. Are list items meaningfully ordered?
7. Is there at least one bolded blockquoted definition if the post makes a conceptual argument?
8. Are paragraphs short?
9. Are bullets used for actual enumerations only?
10. Have agent tics been killed?
11. Is the humor self-deprecating and concrete rather than smug?
12. Does the post cross-reference earlier Tig posts where relevant?
13. Does the ending open a conversation?
14. Read out loud, does it sound like a person talking rather than a deck?

If the answer to the last question is "deck," start over.