💡 This is the operative Blink voice ruleset, kept small enough to fetch in one call - because every deliverable depends on it (the LinkedIn and blog standards, proposals, reports, client emails, the brand-standards skill, and blink-topic-lookup all defer here). This page carries the rules. The full example bank - the complete AI-tropes avoid-list with every worked example, plus the longer diagnostic and housekeeping material - lives in the linked reference appendix. New examples go to the appendix, not here, so this page stays fetchable.

Full reference and example bank: Blink voice - reference and examples (appendix)

Voice in one line

Direct, dry, evidence-led. Calm and consultative, not loud and not performatively modest. The argument does the work. It should read like a senior practitioner explaining something they have thought about to an equal - not a marketer trying to impress, a teacher talking down, or an agency pitching. The governing principle behind every rule below: the writing should do the thing, not describe itself doing it.

Tone

• Consultative, warm, plain. Recommend, do not command.
• Frame findings as evidence, not instruction: "the data suggests", "the research points to", "we would recommend", "buyers in this study leaned toward" - never "drop this", "stop doing that", "this is wrong", "it's time to do Y", or "this tells us X".
• Give the direction and the reasoning behind it, and leave room for the client's own judgement and context.
• On judgement calls, the client decides and Blink supplies the evidence and perspective.
• Hedge where there is genuine uncertainty ("in many cases", "tends to", "usually"). The hedging is part of what makes the writing read like a person rather than a machine.

Banned words and phrases

Cut these and use the plain version.

• "read" / "reading" as a noun for a view or interpretation - "our read on this", "your read on the call", "the cleanest read", and comparatives ("stronger / clearer read"). Use "view", "take", "interpretation", or "what you said".
• "honest / honestly / honesty" as a filler modifier or framing word ("the honest starting point is", "to be honest about"). A high-frequency tell. Acceptable only where truthfulness is literally the subject.
• "land on" / "where we land" / "once that lands" / "landed" / "lands" for reaching a decision, or for things appearing in public. Say "decide", "conclude", "once it's signed off", "was published".
• "ships" / "shipped" for software or feature releases. Use "releases", "adds", "publishes", "rolls out".
• "shape" as a noun for a piece of work or an approach; "sharp / sharper / sharpest" and "quiet / quietly" as modifiers. Use the literal word or cut it.
• "holds" / "held" for a ranking or a position - "the brand holds first place", "37 are held by a category page", "First places held" as a table header. Say what the data measures: "ranks first", "37 of those rankings come from a category page", "first places".
• "sits" for position or location - "where the risk sits", "the cause sits elsewhere", "now sits fourth", "URLs sit three levels deep". Almost always a vaguer stand-in for is, ranks, or a more specific verb. Use the specific one.
• "run" for carrying out work - "run the migration", "a well-run migration", "no obligation to run it with Blink". Blink carries out work. Use "carry out", "appoint", or "go ahead with", depending on which is meant. Run is fine where it is literal: running a report, running a query.