paper-template/claudese.md

# Claudese — do not use

Claude's stock words and phrases, banned: to the person, to another Claude, and in every document and paper.  Use My English; follow the style guide.  The person adds more over time.

**My English is the person's own** --- the English of `writing-style-guide.md`, which is how every text here is written.  Claudese is what it is not.

🔴 **A ban carries its My English alternative.**  Every entry is written `banned word or phrase --- My English: <what to write instead>`, and a session that catches Claudese names the ban and gives the alternative in My English, never the ban alone.  Where the alternative depends on what is being said, the entry says what to state instead, as the older entries in parentheses do.  The older entries below predate the rule and are not rewritten; examples accumulate as they are caught.

blast radius
pattern (except in pattern-matching)
shape
involving
honest
honestly
honesty
leverage
utilise
facilitate
underscore
highlight
showcase
foster
empower
unlock
make X actionable
gate-only
lands the gate
wires it
gate to call
load-bearing
lands
surface
flip the test
the gate
the gate enforcing
flag-flip
expose
on the same footing
is silent on
discharge (of a claim — use "fulfil")
collapsing
fall under one label
move (as in "one move", "two moves" — vague for a construct, component, step, or whatever)
decide, supply, answer, tell, reveal, capture — with a mathematical object as the actor (a graph, degree, flow, number, or proposition does not act)
the tools of
the language of
the lens of
as such questions are in X
rails
read as (a metaphor for technical content — holdings form a graph, they are not "read as" one)
carries its own sanction
giving form to
the deficit realised
restores the flow (use "restores liquidity")
is enacted
not X but Y (contrast flourish — "what secures a debt is not an asset but …"; state the fact directly)
what it holds / what it can reach (compressed em-dash glosses of formal quantities)
X is what Y can do alone and now
differs in kind
what distinguishes X is that (write "X alone …" or state the difference directly)
answered with / answers with (a design or a literature does not answer)
asks how (a field does not ask)
is theirs alone
legible (use "visible")
stand where X would (use "take the place of")
mirrored clauses ("separates what X does from what Y does" — state each side plainly)
makes it precise (with a definition or an obligation as the actor)
repairs (for a financial failure — use "remedies")
elliptical apposition ("its value the issuer's credit" — write the verb: "its value being …")
is its economic life (and similar "X is its Y" identity flourishes)
alone
gives (in the sense of presents or explains --- "Section 4 gives the machine"; also give, giving)
turns on (as in "the distinction the paper turns on" --- say the difference plainly)
turns on, of what a fact depends on ("whether a bond is mature turns on its issuer's date") --- My English: name what it depends on with the plain verb: "whether a bond is mature is subject to its issuer advancing its date".  The entry above stands; this is the same ban in a second sense, where its alternative, "say the difference plainly", does not apply
compressed clause with a mathematical object as the actor ("X is moved before it is taken, the motion recording the assembly that decides it" --- write the two facts as sentences)
the same fault in a relative clause ("a supermajority of each assembly its motions record" --- write "the electorate of each of its motions")
elliptical apposition in a row ("its object the community's records, its configuration the assembly they compute, and its quorums the supermajorities of that assembly" --- write the verbs)
a collective noun standing for its members where the distinction matters ("held by its assembly", where the fact is that every member of the assembly holds a copy)
takes up (a section does not take something up --- "Section 9 takes up the clauses"; say what the section does with them.  "up to renaming" is the mathematical idiom and stands)
a fronted participial clause that compresses a step and then makes a condition, a definition or a theorem the actor ("formalised as conditions on its acts, they give it the property he envisioned" --- conditions do not give; state the fact with its object as the subject: "a contract meeting these conditions has the property")
state (of a paper and its results --- "state its properties"; a paper presents or proves them)
provides (of prior work or a literature --- "prior work provides mutual credit"; write "prior work includes", or say what the work is)
no one but X, none but X ("a payment involves no one but the payer, the payee and the issuer" --- the negative of a positive statement; write "a payment involves the payer, the payee and the issuer")
its own, of its own, of their own, as filler emphasis ("a literature of its own", "needs no protocol of its own", "a program of their own", "code of its own") --- My English: "a literature", "does not need a separate protocol", "a separate program", "separate code".  A possessive that carries a real contrast --- "its own coins", "coins of their own issue" --- stands
the cleft "what is X is Y" ("what is proposed here is their conjunction", "what is argued is a bound", "what bounds the coins is the central bank's issuance") --- My English: state the fact with its subject: "Here we proposed their conjunction", "we argue a bound", "the central bank's issuance bounds the coins"
a bare possessive as predicate ("the distinction is Goodfriend's", "those questions are each jurisdiction's") --- My English: write the verb: "Goodfriend draws the distinction", "those are questions for each jurisdiction"
guarded at X, guards at X (of a transaction or an act schema --- "each schema of payment guards at the payer alone", "pay and redeem, guarded at $p$ alone") --- My English: "guarded by X", "each schema of payment is guarded by the payer".  It is also mathematically wrong: a transaction is guarded *by* the roles whose consent it takes, while an atom is required, forbidden, added or deleted *at* a role, so "at" for a guard names the wrong relation
the post-nominal "only" and "alone" ("guarded by the payer alone", "by redemptions alone", "the debt of its issuer only", "for payment routing only") --- My English: delete it, the sentence saying the same without it: "guarded by the payer", "by redemptions", "the debt of its issuer", "for payment routing".  Where "alone" negates partially, deleting it reverses the claim and the word is "solely": "not solely at the interbank tier", "rather than solely by legal contract".  Where it means "by themselves" the qualifier is doing the work of a wrong subject: name the subject and it goes.  Three worked examples, the person's own: "it alone can always issue a fiat coin" --- My English: "only it can issue a fiat coin", the focus adverb before the pronoun and "always" redundant beside it; "the coins alone create no credit, open no lending channel and add no instrument of policy" --- My English: "the coins neither create credit, nor open a lending channel, nor add an instrument of policy"; "What the coins alone do not do" --- My English: "What the money component does not do"
leave (of what an act or a protocol leaves behind --- "the graph those acts leave", "what the run leaves") --- My English: name what is produced and say the plain verb: "the holdings the acts produce, and the graph of those holdings"; the same fault as `lands` and `gives`, a vague verb standing in for the plain one

🔴 **The deep structure under the entries above**, found by analysing the post-nominal "only"/"alone" occurrences in several papers and one paragraph of a paper.  Four constructions, each with its My English; a word-level ban above is usually an instance of one of them.

1. A qualifier that repeats what the sentence already says --- "guarded by the payer alone", "by redemptions alone", "only it can always issue" --- My English: delete it: "guarded by the payer", "by redemptions", "only it can issue".  The exclusion is in the statement; the qualifier adds emphasis and no content.  It stays where deleting it reverses the claim, and there the word is "solely".  Where it cannot be deleted at all the subject is wrong: "What the coins alone do not do" --- My English: "What the money component does not do".

2. An abstract noun as the subject of a negated verb, where an agent acted --- "The concept does not require this" --- My English: name who did what: "That is a choice those designs made, not something a CBDC must be."

3. Our own contribution written as a fault of others, the proposal left to be inferred --- "It is a limitation of these designs and not of the concept" --- My English: "we" as the subject and the proposal in the sentence: "Here we propose to augment the CBDC coins with CBDC bonds, so that credit and the instruments of monetary policy sit inside the CBDC."

4. The same claim restated in three registers in place of one claim with its warrant --- "credit creation and monetary-policy operations remain outside the CBDC.  These designs leave them outside; the concept does not require it.  It is a limitation of these designs and not of the concept." --- My English: say it once, then why, then what follows.

🔴 **The rule these four come from: think of the person as the reader.**  Where a passage in a paper and the same point said to the person in chat differ, the chat version is the My English and the paper's is the Claudese, so write the paper in the language you write to them.

What the person approved in the same discussion, and which is therefore My English: "solely" where the negation is partial; the focus adverb before the pronoun, "only it can issue", in place of "it alone"; "neither ... nor" for a coordinated negation, in place of a negation repeated on each object ("create no credit, open no lending channel"); the subject named in place of a qualifier; and a paragraph of three sentences --- the claim, its warrant, the proposal.
"X-dependent" as a predicate ("whether the central bank may issue it is jurisdiction-dependent", "implementation-dependent", "deployment-dependent") --- My English: say who decides, with the verb: "whether the central bank may issue it is a question for each jurisdiction", "each deployment decides it".  It is the bare possessive as predicate above in a hyphenated adjective, and construction 2 of the four: an abstraction in the predicate where someone decides
a body sentence built of terms of art ("not denied legal effect for being electronic, which is what the statutes provide", "negotiable within the bills and notes acts", "the authority to issue it is statutory: the digital pound is to be introduced only once Parliament has passed the primary legislation") --- My English: the plain word in the body and the exact formulation in the citation: "legally binding also in electronic form~\cite{...}", "whether it is negotiable", "whether the central bank may issue it~\cite{boe2026progress}".  A sentence a reader cannot parse without the statute is unreadable however correct it is, and correcting a loose claim by importing the source's formulation is what produces one
a repair that adds a referring noun phrase ("and the three have yet to be measured", after a sentence listing three things) --- My English: the adverb that points back, "and have yet to be similarly measured".  The reader carries on with an adverb and has to count back with a noun phrase; and the repair holds the sentence count of what it repairs
"X is no Y" with a predicate noun ("a sovereign grassroots coin is no fiat coin", "a swap across denominations is no act of the contract", "a participant of every payment and no guard of it", "are no part of them") --- My English: "is not a Y": "a sovereign grassroots coin is not a fiat coin", "is not an act of the contract", "and not a guard of it", "are not part of them".  The quantifier "no X" as subject or object is not this and stands ("no demand for conversion increases them", "the parties need no mutual credit"), nor is the existential "there is no X"
"X that names Y", and "X names Y", with a text, a term or an object as the subject ("a sentence that names the condition", "the clause that names the payer", "the citation that names the source", "a request that names Google Docs", "the definition names the guard") --- My English: the plain verb or preposition for the relation: "a sentence stating the condition", "the clause on the payer", "the citation of the source", "a request for a Google Doc", "the definition states the guard".  A person names something; a text states it or is about it.  It is the same fault as `gives`, `lands` and `leave`, a vague verb standing in for the plain one

🔴 **Sharpened, for explanatory text in a paper**: when you add an explanation to a paper, write the explanation you would give the person in chat.  It is the same rule as "think of the person as the reader" above, at the moment of writing rather than at the moment of checking: the chat sentence is the paper sentence.