Plain English

Pull the signal out of the noise. Do not rewrite the text. Select from it.

The reader is someone who has to act on this text. The bottom line is the consequence for the reader, not the topic of the text.

The guarantee

Add nothing. Drop nothing that changes the reader's take.

Never carry a hedge, bound, condition, scope limit, or attribution forward as its own text. It rides along as part of the claim it modifies.

Output contract

Never write anything before the bottom line. No preamble, no "Here is the breakdown".

**Bottom line:** <the one thing that matters to this reader, or "Nothing actionable.">

**What it claims**
- **<strength>:** <the claim, with its hedge, number, and scope attached>
  <optional: one sentence naming what the hedge costs, only when the label alone does not show it>

**Not stated**
- <what a reader needs and does not get>

**What it implies but never claims**   <- only when this gap exists
- <the reading the text induces, and the device that induces it>

Rules for the shape:

• Length tracks real content, not input length. Three sentences of substance produce three bullets. A 2,000-word post with one claim gets one. Never pad a section to make the output look proportionate to the input.
• Drop Not stated only when nothing material is missing. That is rare.
• Drop What it implies but never claims whenever there is no gap. That is common, and an empty section is worse than none.

Strength labels

Every claim gets exactly one label.

Judgment calls:

• Label by what the sentence does, not by its verb. "We will consider it" is hedged, not promise, because the committed act is only consideration.
• A hedged promise is hedged. The escape hatch wins.
• Attribution outranks the rest. "The vendor says it cuts costs 40%" is attributed, even though the inner claim is a fact.
• If a sentence carries two separately falsifiable claims, split it into two bullets. Never merge two claims under one label.

What must ride along with a claim

Attach each of these to its bullet, in plain words.

Judge these by meaning. essentially and effectively are hedges when they mean "close but not exactly". only is a bound in "only 3 users" and filler in "just click here". significant is a claim when the source gives the number and vague when it does not.

Add nothing

• Never add context, examples, definitions, or corrections from your own knowledge, however right. If the source is wrong, say the source claims it and put the correction nowhere.
• Keep an undefined domain term as the source wrote it. Do not gloss it. If it blocks meaning, that belongs under Not stated.
• Vagueness is data. "significant improvement" with no number is extracted as a claim with no number, so the reader learns the number is missing.
• Do not resolve an ambiguous pronoun by guessing.
• Do not add a cause the source only implies by adjacency. That belongs under What it implies but never claims.

Finding what is not stated

List only absences that block the reader's decision.

• Who acts, decides, or is accountable. Passive voice and "it was determined" are the tell.
• When. "Soon", "in due course", "in the coming weeks" are absences, not dates.
• How much. A percentage with no baseline, a gain with no denominator.
• Who is affected, and how they find out.
• What happens if it fails, or what the tradeoff cost.
• The comparison. "Faster" and "better" need a "than what".

List the absence, not a complaint about it. Write "Who decided", not "They conveniently avoid saying who decided".

What it implies but never claims

Include this section only when the text induces a belief it never asserts. Every bullet names the device, so the reader can check you.

• Adjacency posing as cause. "Sales fell. We changed the pricing." implies a link the text never claims.
• A hedge placed to read as a commitment. "We aim to ship in Q3" in a section headed "Q3 Deliverables".
• A statistic with no denominator. "Support tickets dropped 60%" implies fewer problems, and never says volume fell because a product was retired.
• An actor hidden by the passive so nobody appears responsible.
• Precision borrowed from an unrelated number. An exact figure next to a vague claim lends it false weight.
• A retracted commitment stated as progress. "We have decided to focus elsewhere" for work that was cancelled.

Name the device and stop. Never speculate about motive. Never write a bullet you cannot point at a specific sentence for.

When the source says nothing

What it claims comes out thin or empty, and Not stated comes out long. Write the bottom line as Nothing actionable. followed on the same line by what the text is doing instead, in one clause: announcing an announcement, restating its own title, or promising detail later.

Do not manufacture claims to fill the section. An empty What it claims is a finding.

Reference

references/examples.md owns the worked cases. Read it for these four calls only: may as granted permission versus may as a hedge, the author as their own source, stacked qualifiers on one claim, and an empty claims list.