Sales materials

Writing rules

Half of what makes something look like Varick is not visual. The voice is a senior partner explaining something to a smart friend: polished, direct, every word earning its place. Never trying to impress.

Source of truth: pack-naomi/how-we-write/varick-writing-RULES.md, plus anti-ai-writing before drafting.

The rules

The left column is the repertoire. The right column is hard, one hit means the line gets rewritten.

Use contractions. "We don't", not "we do not".
Be specific over abstract. Name the tool, the role, the number.
Hyperlink URLs. Never paste a raw one.
Number section headings in anything client-facing.
Prefer a table over a wall of prose, so a reader can jump to the row that matters to them.
On the company account, "we". Never corporate third person, Varick does not refer to itself by name.
The legal entity is SolidCart, Inc (d/b/a Varick Agents).

Don’t

Em dashes. The character U+2014 and its "--" substitute, everywhere, including internal docs and code comments.
"Here's X" mid-flow in short-form.
Dramatic short fragments. "The tools were fine. The problem was X."
"No X. No Y. No Z." fragment lists.
The reframe family, in every variant: "it's not X, it's Y", "not X but Y", "X isn't the Y, it's the Z".
Isolated one-liner reveals, and repetition for emphasis.
Exclamation marks, unless the excitement is real.
"fundamentally" and "game-changing".
Borrowed-pundit clichés: "said the quiet part out loud", "make no mistake", "the elephant in the room", "let that sink in", "to be clear".
"I" on the company account. That is the personal account's voice, not the company's.

The reframe family

The most overused construction in machine-written prose, and the one that slips through most often because each variant looks different.

Banned shape	Instead
"It's not X, it's Y"	Say what the thing is.
"Not X but Y"	Say what the thing is.
"You didn't build X, you built Y"	Say what they built.
"X isn't the Y. It's the Z."	Say what X is.
"The headline isn't the speed. The real story is Y."	Lead with Y.
"It's not the price. It's not the features. It's the trust."	Name the one that matters.
"X is just Y wearing makeup"	Describe X.

The whole shape is banned, not the literal phrase. If a sentence gets its effect from negating one thing to elevate another, rewrite it.

Long-form is different

The bans above target filler in short-form, where it replaces substance. In an article, connective tissue is what keeps the piece from reading jagged.

These stay in long-form: “That said,” “The reality is,” “Here, [next idea]…”, “Same logic applies to…”, “Which brings us to…”. Generic anti-AI checklists tell you to cut these. In Varick long-form they stay, and this rule wins over any external list.

Rule of thumb

Cut a transition only if cutting it does not make the piece feel jagged. When editing someone else’s long-form, leave their connective tissue alone unless it trips one of the hard bans, which apply everywhere.

What this does not do

The honest part, and the reason the rules are framed as a draft standard rather than a publish gate.

Following these rules does not make a draft undetectable

AI-authored prose scores near 100% AI on Pangram no matter how human the style is. This has been tested repeatedly: loose, blunt, voice-matched drafts stripped of every banned pattern and cut to 180 words still score about 0.99. Restyling does not move the number. It flags because a model generated it.

So	Do this
Long-form	Produce the tightest, most on-voice draft you can, then say plainly that it still flags until it is retyped in the author's own words.
Short-form	Tweets, comments and LinkedIn posts are short enough that the tight register is natural, and they are usually finished by hand.
Assembling a piece	Source text beats paraphrase. Reuse real sentences from prior posts, edits and transcripts, and write as little net-new connective prose as possible.
Never	Claim a draft passes. Iterate five times trying to beat a detector by rewording. Hide behind "informational only".

Inside a document

A few rules that only apply to something a client signs or files.

Rule	Why
Number every section in a client-facing document	So it can be referenced in an email or on a call without ambiguity.
Prefer tables over prose walls	A reader jumps to the row that matters to them. A wall of prose makes them read all of it or none of it.
Load anti-ai-writing before drafting the copy	Not after. Editing a draft into voice is slower and worse than writing it in voice.
The legal entity is SolidCart, Inc (d/b/a Varick Agents)	Anywhere a legal name is required. "Varick Agents" alone is the trading name.
Mark illustrative figures as illustrative	The note() block exists for exactly this. A number that looks committed and was not is the one mistake a client remembers.