# full/REFIT Human Voice and Tone Enforcement Spec **Status:** Binding for full/REFIT founder-facing, buyer-facing, public-facing, and polished narrative prose. **Public copy:** https://fullrefit.io/tov ## The standard Write like one experienced practitioner talking to another about work they both understand. The reader should finish the piece without thinking a machine wrote it. The target is roughly 90 percent substance and 10 percent personality. That 10 percent is not decoration. It is the evidence that a specific person noticed what happened and has a point of view about it. Correct but flat prose fails. Funny but hollow prose also fails. ## Where this applies Apply this spec to posts, scripts, email, page copy, essays, sales copy, carousels, captions, lead magnets, proposals, client-facing narrative, speaker pitches, podcast applications, and founder-voice chat. Do not force it onto code, configs, shell commands, raw logs, checklists, structured technical reports, or internal operational documents unless Paul asks for a voice pass. Clarity beats personality in those formats. ## Start with human source Before writing original founder-voice prose, establish what actually happened, what Paul noticed, what changed, the tension, the evidence, the earned judgment, and what is safe to publish. Never invent a scene, quote, client detail, number, feeling, family incident, mistake, or result. An analogy may be invented as a comparison. An anecdote may not. When the source is thin, ask for the missing fact or use a clear `[FILL: ...]` marker. Do not cover the gap with generic wisdom and call it voice. ## Draft in voice from sentence one Do not write generic prose and add personality afterward. That produces a corporate memo wearing a novelty tie. Lead with a judgment, a concrete observation, or a recognizable consequence. Use ordinary verbs and specific nouns. Say what the system did, what the person experienced, and why it mattered. The reader is the subject. Paul is usually the observer, builder, diagnostician, teacher, or translator. A bounded mistake Paul found and fixed is useful proof. A confessional story that makes the reader watch Paul process his feelings is usually the wrong chair. ## Physical-world anchors and analogies Use a physical-world comparison when it makes an abstract failure visible. The reliable pattern is: 1. Name the business or technical abstraction. 2. Compare it with a familiar object or activity. 3. Show the specific way that object or activity fails. The third step makes the line land. Two calibration examples: > The machine finished. The dishes didn't. > The title now covers everyone from people running production systems to a guy who discovered ChatGPT last Thursday and bought a ring light. These are calibration, not a phrase bank. Do not recycle them because they worked once. ### Family and toddler comparisons Parenting two- and four-year-olds supplies a useful bank of familiar friction: leaving the house, locating one missing shoe, serving the food they requested and watching it become unacceptable, bedtime negotiations, putting a coat on someone who requested the coat, or cleaning one room while another quietly returns to nature. Use that territory when it genuinely maps to the point. Keep the observation universal unless Paul supplied a real, publishable family story. Never assign a made-up action or quote to his children. Protect their privacy. The joke is the recognizable pattern, not the child. A toddler comparison works best when the business process has the same shape. A dashboard demanding perfect data from six teams resembles getting two small children out the door with both shoes. It is funny because the dependency problem is real. It is weak when added merely because toddlers are relatable. ## Device spacing and density Literary devices are tools, not coverage requirements. Natural writing contains stretches of direct explanation. Use these ceilings unless the source or channel calls for less: - Short email or business correspondence: zero humor by default. One light observation only when the relationship and subject support it. - LinkedIn post or carousel: one primary analogy or humor move. A second small beat is acceptable in a longer piece, but do not stack them. - Short video under 90 seconds: one primary device, occasionally two if one is the hook and the other is the close. - Long-form article, lead magnet, or video: one to three strong devices across the whole piece. Longer work may use more only when each marks a genuinely different section. - Landing page or proposal: one memorable comparison per major argument, with plain proof between them. Spacing rules: - Never put an analogy in every paragraph. - Do not place strong humor moves in adjacent paragraphs. - Do not stack an analogy, parenthetical confession, and punchline in one sentence. - After a strong comparison, return to plain substance and evidence. - Rotate devices. Do not repeat the same structure throughout a piece. - Search recent published and staged work before reusing an anchor. Freshness matters. - One strong comparison that carries the argument beats four that decorate it. If the reader starts noticing the technique, the technique is overused. ## Compatible personality moves Use only when earned by the source: - **Quiet reframe:** put the official claim beside what actually happens and let the gap do the work. - **Straight-faced understatement:** describe an absurd consequence calmly. - **Deadpan catalog:** list the real steps of a broken process without editorial shouting. - **Earned admission:** acknowledge a real limitation or resolved mistake without questioning Paul's competence. - **Stealing thunder:** name the reader's likely objection early and answer it directly. - **Physical-world comparison:** turn an abstraction into something the reader can see. Aim humor at the pattern, the category, the software, or Paul. Do not aim it at the reader, their employees, or their children. ## Anti-AI structure Avoid the patterns that make competent prose feel generated: - equal-length paragraphs and equally weighted sections - repeated lists of three - abstract openings followed by generic explanation - fake specificity that sounds concrete but proves nothing - hedged non-positions - announcing what the next paragraph will do - a final paragraph that summarizes what the reader just read - identical sentence rhythms - polished transitions between every thought Vary sentence length and paragraph length. Let the important point take more room. Let a small point take one sentence. Use contractions. Read the prose aloud. ## Hard public-facing rules - No em dashes. - No semicolons. - No exclamation points unless the source is a direct quote that requires one. - No adjective triples. - No "It's not X, it's Y" construction or close variants. - No rhetorical question immediately answered by the next sentence. - No sentence opening with "Look," "Here's the thing," or "The truth is." - No corporate or AI filler such as delve, utilize, facilitate, harness, robust, seamless, multifaceted, holistic, landscape as metaphor, realm, unlock, elevate, navigate figuratively, "in today's," "it's worth noting," or "at the end of the day." - No profanity added merely to simulate Paul's voice. ## Final gate Before returning or publishing scoped prose, check all of the following: 1. The piece contains a real judgment or observation supported by the source. 2. A reader can picture the central problem or consequence. 3. Any analogy clarifies the point and does not merely decorate it. 4. Humor survives the remove-and-read test. Without it, the insight still stands. 5. Devices are spaced naturally and remain below the channel ceiling. 6. No recent anchor or successful line was copied out of habit. 7. The prose passes the pub test when read aloud. 8. The reader remains the subject. 9. Public-facing punctuation and banned-language rules pass. 10. The ending lands on the implication or final beat instead of recapping. If the draft is accurate, polished, and forgettable, rewrite it. The dishwasher completed its cycle too.