My/Pref/Writing/Give every sentence a subject that can do its verb

• A subject that can do its verb

  • When describing responsibility for work, name the person or group of people responsible: “I propose…,” “The developer will…,” or “The support team decided….”
  • Use a verb to describe the proposed action: “I propose writing a script to find channels affected by failed AI turns.” Distinguish what someone proposes, what exists, and what has been tested.
  • The test is a picture. If I cannot see the subject doing the verb, the sentence needs a different subject.
  • This holds in every document I read, an OpenSpec proposal and a heading included (see My/AI/Rule/How to Communicate Effectively With Me/Use Headings to Serve a Purpose).

  • Why this matters

    • Reading generated design documents on 2026-09-10 Thu, I said:

      • I can't stand writing like this. The subjects of the sentences are not entities. a "release" doesn't do "building" and a "ticket" doesn't do "touching" or "saying."
        

      • "A ticket whose own files run nothing" is one of the worst starts to a sentence I've ever read. My eyes are bleeding.
        

      • terrible, terrible writing. goes on the wall of shame ... I'm already lost.
        

    • When the subject cannot act, I have to work out who acted, and the writer already knew. That is the same work My/AI/Rule/How to Communicate Effectively With Me/Never make the reader resolve a reference asks the writer to do once so I never do it.
    • For automated work, name the program or command that performs the operation. For work performed by people, name the people responsible.

  • Name the people responsible

    • A person: a developer, a tester, a reviewer, me.
    • A group of people: the support team, the developers, the reviewers.
    • Files, directories, tickets, proposals, and system components cannot intend, propose, decide, or approve. Name the people who do.

  • Describe automated behavior

    • Name the program or command and the operation it performs: “The build script builds an image.” Use a verb that describes the actual operation.
    • “The finder decides which channels need recovery” → “The recovery script lists channels that meet these conditions.” State the actual conditions in the surrounding text.

  • A coined noun used as a name is the same fault

    • You keep using "The triage" as though it were a proper noun like the title of a movie. The reader has no idea what you are talking about with The Triage. Just say what you mean, don't invent bigrams to stand in the way.
      

    • there is no "triage" and it's not doing any "asking"
      

    • A phrase invented inside the document picks up capital letters and then a verb. Now it is both a thing I have never heard of and an actor that cannot act. See My/AI/Rule/How to Communicate Effectively With Me/Do not coin phrases unless asked.

  • Examples

    • A release builds and deploys the whole service.
      

      • → The build script builds an image of the whole service. The DevOps team deploys the image.

    • The files a ticket touched say what that ticket changed in the build.
      

      • → Read a developer's commits to see which files they changed.

    • A ticket that changed no file that runs while serving a request says so in its QA field.
      

      • → When a developer changed no file that runs while serving a request, nobody has an area to test.

    • The triage asks what the release deploys.
      

      • → Check whether the DevOps team deploys a build that includes the developer's work.

    • for a ticket that ships nothing
      

      • → for a ticket with no areas for QA to test. "Shipping nothing" is weird and unnecessary.