Jesse Fowler: work record

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Style is countable: measuring my own voice

Agent-written copy was reading like a machine under the partners' names, so I counted my own writing and tested it blind.

Agent-written copy was going out under the partners' names, and it sounded like a machine. I judged the voice work we had to be weak. My answer was to stop writing style guides out of adjectives.

Instead we counted how I actually write, using my own texts, email, dictation and recordings, and measured the result with a blind test. A voice you cannot measure cannot be checked. If I can still pick myself out of a blind test, the work is not finished.

We counted 3,407,821 of my words. In the first round I scored 8 of 10, and in the second 7 of 10, where chance would give 5.

One pair fooled me. My real message had two f-bombs in it, the machine version was clean, and I picked the clean one as mine. Style is countable. Measure it, then test it against the person.

Story details

TypeStrong opinion
Year2026
Firm tellingon the Common Ground wiki

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