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Modern Web Writing Guide

This repository is a practical playbook for modern web writing.

It is intentionally focused on writing craft, not fiction craft and not standalone audience-growth strategy.

Scope​

This guide covers:

  • Ideation and outlining
  • Clear, high-velocity drafting
  • Editing for clarity and usefulness
  • Format-specific rules for common web mediums
  • Style-specific rules that can be mixed responsibly
  • Reusable references for cross-cutting concepts

This guide does not cover:

  • Novel or long-form fiction techniques
  • Platform growth tactics that are not directly tied to writing quality
  • Tool-specific lint setup instructions

Rule Block Format​

Every guidance rule should use this structure:

  1. Advice title (rule)
  2. Description and explanation
  3. Negative example
  4. Positive example

Directory Map​

  • general/: universal writing advice across formats
  • formats/: medium-specific playbooks
  • content-intent/: purpose-specific playbooks (what the piece is trying to achieve)
  • styles/: voice and style playbooks
  • references/: reusable concept docs used by multiple documents

Start Here​

  1. Read general/core-web-writing-rules.md
  2. Read general/idea-generation-systems.md
  3. Pick your target medium in formats/
  4. Pick your content purpose in content-intent/
  5. Pick your primary voice in styles/
  6. Use shared standards in references/

Format vs Content-Intent vs Style​

  • Format: where the piece publishes and how it is packaged (for example newsletter, article, x-thread)
  • Content-intent: what the piece is trying to achieve (for example tutorial, case-study, opinion-piece)
  • Style: how the piece sounds (for example analytical, friendly, persuasive)

Example: article format + deep-dive-analysis content-intent + analytical style.

Required Formats​

  • article
  • blog-post
  • newsletter
  • x-post
  • x-thread
  • reddit-post
  • linkedin-post
  • landing-page-copy
  • press-release
  • science-paper

Required Styles​

  • professional
  • friendly
  • technical
  • academic
  • storytelling
  • persuasive
  • conversational
  • authoritative
  • analytical
  • playful
  • empathetic
  • journalistic
  • minimalist

Content Intent (V1)​

  • tutorial
  • how-to-guide
  • opinion-piece
  • interview-q-and-a
  • case-study
  • roundup-curation
  • announcement
  • personal-essay
  • critique-review
  • deep-dive-analysis
  • listicle
  • counterargument
  • cornerstone

Quality Baselines​

  • Default readability target: Flesch Reading Ease above 70 for web-first writing
  • Dense technical and strict academic contexts may run 60-70 when precision requires it
  • Science paper guidance prioritizes precision, while still encouraging readability improvements
  • Prose rules should align with plain-language checks and consistency checks defined in references/prose-quality-checks.md

Authoring Policy​

  • Keep guidance practical, testable, and example-driven
  • Prefer clear over clever
  • Keep examples realistic for web publishing contexts
  • Avoid direct tool-brand language in guide text

Prompt-Safe Policy​

This guide is used in prompt contexts for content generation. Write guidance so each excerpt is directly usable by an LLM drafting content.

Include:

  • generation-time rules (structure, clarity, specificity, evidence, tone, sequencing)
  • concrete negative and positive examples
  • constraints that can be applied inside a single draft

Avoid:

  • workflow or operations advice (publishing cadence, post-publish analytics, feedback loops)
  • instructions to create multiple variants before choosing
  • platform growth tactics not directly tied to writing quality

Migration Notes​

The prompt-era rules that are most important for generation parity are now documented in:

  • references/target-length-guidance.md
  • references/multi-channel-brief-strategy.md
  • references/image-planning-strategy.md
  • styles/storytelling.md
  • formats/landing-page-copy.md