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Writing Style

The conventions every explanation on this site follows. Extracted from edits made to drafted text, so each rule is a correction that was actually needed rather than a preference stated in advance.

Punctuation

Do not use em-dashes for asides. Use parentheses for a gloss or an example, a comma for a trailing clause, or a full stop to start a new sentence.

Not: Colors are generated in OKLCH — lightness, chroma, hue — rather than RGB.
But: Colors are generated in OKLCH (lightness, chroma, hue) rather than RGB.

Not: …not absolute saturations — which is why increasing Most never pushes a color out of gamut.
But: …not absolute saturations, which is why increasing Most never pushes a color out of gamut.

Not: …at a particular lightness — yellows near the top, blues much lower — and the generator finds that lightness.
But: …at a particular lightness: yellows near the top, blues much lower. The generator finds that lightness.

A colon introduces an example or a list. When an aside would make a sentence run long, end the sentence and start another.

A bold label ends with a colon, not a period: **Depth:**, not **Depth.**. In Japanese the colon is full width: 「深度:」.

Use the serial comma: “depth ordering, sampling, and color selection”.

Sentences

Keep the relative pronoun. Write “colors that sRGB cannot display”, not “colors sRGB cannot display”.

Lead with the action rather than the condition around it.

Not: In HSL, holding saturation and lightness fixed while sweeping hue produces colors of wildly different brightness.
But: In HSL, sweeping the hue while keeping saturation and lightness fixed can produce colors with very different brightness.

Hedge a claim that only holds sometimes. “Can produce” where the outcome depends on which hues are involved; “produces” only where it always does.

A labeled item in a list carries one fact. A second sentence adding a secondary fact gets cut, not appended.

Cut: Sampling is spaced by arc length rather than by curve parameter, so density stays uniform where control points bunch up.
Kept: Sample count (number of vertices) is derived from measured arc length, not from how many control points the path was authored with.

Words

American spelling throughout: color, toward, behavior.

Plain verbs over dramatic ones. Cut intensifiers that add heat but no information.

Not: wildly different · yellow leaps out · that is where yellow can be vivid at all
But: very different · yellow pops · that’s the only place yellow can be vivid

Name the noun instead of using an adjective as one: “at that hue’s most saturated point”, not “at that hue’s most saturated”.

Contractions are fine. “That’s the only place” reads better than “that is where”.

Name the standard term instead of deriving it. If a phenomenon has an accepted name, use it and stop; do not reconstruct the mechanism from first principles.

Not: Two surfaces at the same depth have no defined winner, and the depth test picks one per fragment. The step and the rise remove that question before it can be asked.
But: Z slightly elevates along the stroke to avoid z-fighting.

Drop the article on a noun that names the topic: “Strokes are 2D”, “Sample count is derived”, not “The strokes are 2D”, “The sample count is derived”.

Gloss a term with a parenthetical on first use, in English as in Japanese: “sample count (number of vertices)”.

Call a set of colors chosen to relate a “scheme”, not a “theme”. “Scheme” is the standard term (monochromatic, analogous); “theme” reads as a visual style.

Scope

Describe features of the library. Do not describe the arbitrary decisions of a demo: the shape of its test path, its taper constants, how its colors happen to be picked, or plumbing the reader does not act on. A demo decision is worth a sentence only when the demo would mislead without it.

Cut: Each path runs straight for its first third, then wiggles. The amplitude is held at zero and eased in with a smoothstep…
Cut: …the background from the light end, the strokes from the dark end, grouped by hue so two strokes never come back as near-identical shades.
Kept: The sample count is derived from measured arc length, not from how many control points the path was authored with.

The kept example survives because it states what the library does with any path. The cut examples describe one demo’s inputs, which the reader can neither reuse nor act on.

Endings

Stop when the fact is stated. Do not append a clause explaining why the fact matters, or restating it in other words.

Not: OKLCH is built so a fixed lightness reads as a fixed lightness across every hue, which is what lets a column of the grid hold together as a column.
But: OKLCH is designed so that a fixed lightness reads as a consistent lightness across hues.

That example also shows the rhetorical repetition to avoid — “a fixed lightness reads as a fixed lightness”, “hold together as a column”. Repeating a word for effect reads as a flourish. Vary the second use, or cut the clause.

A brief reason for a foundational choice is content, not padding: “OKLCH is one of the most perceptually accurate and computationally performant color models.” The rule above targets restating why an already-stated fact matters, not justifying a design decision.

Openings

Open a page with a plain description of what the thing is. Not an aphorism, not a hook, not a first-person musing.

Not: Before deciding what a mark looks like, decide what colors exist.
But: A reusable palette class that distributes colors using the OKLCH model

Monologues

The monologue at the top of a page is the working-log voice, not the documentation voice. It may use the first person and a reflective tone (the exception to the “no first-person musing” rule, which governs the prose body). Each monologue carries a Japanese counterpart in a nested <div class="jp">, following the Geom project’s style.