Writing fingerprint · Specifics
Specifics: whether your text talks about real people and things, or about types.
This is the biggest gap between Claude and the writers people read by choice, and the one we named a rule after. Five of the 24 measures track it.
The Jaqen rule
A man does not say "I".
Jaqen H'ghar, the assassin in Game of Thrones, never says "I". He says "a man". "A man pays his debts." "A girl must earn it." Language models write the same way. They let a kind stand in for an instance: "a founder", "a buyer", "the plan", "most teams". It is efficient. It covers every founder at once, in the timeless present, and puts nobody in the room.
The fix is particularity. Say which one, when, and what it looked like. "A car goes fast" becomes "the yellow Lamborghini was doing 180 on the ring road". Adding "when" is one way to get there. A name, a date, a number or a detail does the same work.
A boss wants to know what happens to the team's week.
The boss, who approves anything above a number no vendor is ever told, got a two-line summary in a corridor between two other meetings.
Same brief, same boss. The first is any boss, always. The second is one boss, once, with a detail ("a number no vendor is ever told") that makes them real.
In numbers
Where Claude sits on the five specifics measures.
| Measure | Writers | Claude before W10 | Claude after W10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type subjects % of clauses | 21 ± 5.8 | 55.8 far off | 45.5 far off |
| Made-up scenes per 100 sentences | 0 ± 0.5 | 2.6 far off | 0.8 a little off |
| Type actions % of sentences | 1.3 ± 1 | 8.6 far off | 5.7 far off |
| "The" actions % of sentences | 1 ± 0.6 | 8 far off | 1.4 in range |
| Type states % of sentences | 2.7 ± 1.8 | 7.4 far off | 4.8 a little off |
Type subjects are the widest gap on this page: more than half of Claude's clauses, against a fifth of the writers'. W10's rules cut "the" actions to the writers' level and cut the made-up scenes by two thirds. Type subjects are still far off.
Type subjects
Half of Claude's clauses are about a kind of thing.
A type subject is a subject that names a kind: "a founder", "buyers", "every post", "most plans", "the industry". Writers use them in about 21% of their main clauses, often to set up a claim they then make concrete. Claude used them in 56%.
A post from last Tuesday says the company is awake.
Google rolled AI Overviews out across the United States in May 2024.
The first is a type with a made-up date, and it talks: posts don't say anything. The second names a company, a product, a country and a month.
A launch-month burst tells her the company makes them.
When Forrester surveyed more than 18,000 business buyers, 89% said they'd had a purchase stall, often over budget.
The first is a law of nature about bursts. The second is a survey somebody ran, with its size and its result.
Made-up scenes
The buyer opens your blog on a Tuesday night. Which buyer?
A made-up scene is a type doing something at an invented time: "A founder opens the dashboard on Monday." It looks like a story and has the shape of one, with nobody in it. Writers almost never write them. Claude wrote about 2.6 per 100 sentences before the rules, and 0.8 after.
On the night before a sales call, the buyer opens your blog, and the first thing she reads is the dates.
Google put AI Overviews above its search results in May 2024, and OpenAI gave ChatGPT web search that October.
The first scene never happened; it happens every night to everyone. The second happened twice, on dates you can check.
Type actions and states
Things that happen to nobody in particular.
Three measures catch the Jaqen sentence by its verb. Type actions: a kind acting in the present ("Buyers skim."). "The" actions: the same with "the" ("The plan starts with a number."). Type states: a kind in a state ("A buyer needs proof."). Writers keep each to one or two sentences in a hundred. Claude wrote between 7 and 9.
The calendar assumes a person whose job is review.
PageRank, the idea Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on at Stanford in the late 1990s, counted the links pointing at a page as votes.
A "the" action: a calendar doing the assuming, in no time at all. Against it, a named idea, two named people, a place and a decade.
Trial users email support about the one step that confused them.
Amy Hayes, who led the research, said vendors could help by giving buyers material that makes the case for the purchase and answers what the rest of the buying group will ask.
Both report what people do. The first is every trial user, always. The second is one researcher, who said it, once.
Questions
About specifics.
What is the Jaqen rule?
Why do AI models write in types?
Should I never write "a founder" or "buyers"?
"Claude before W10": 12 drafts our writer, running on Claude, produced on 8 briefs for our own blog between 26 and 29 October 2026. "Claude after W10": 4 drafts on 4 of those briefs, with W10's rules added to its instructions. Every quote is copied from those drafts as written. Coloured with W10V4's reference set. "Writers" is the middle and spread of our reference set of essayists, authors and company blogs.
Paste a draft and see where it sits.
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