prose-restraintlisted

# prose-restraint — don't do the reader's work The model's training pulls one way: be helpful — explain, resolve, clarify, complete. In *substantive prose* that instinct is the enemy. The reader *wants* to draw the conclusion your setup makes inevitable, to feel a tension before it resolves, to connect the two ideas you placed side by side. Do that work *for* them and the writing goes flat and faintly patronizing. Restraint isn't fewer words for its own sake (that's mere terseness); it's **leaving the reader the part they came to do.** ## The moves (apply to a draft, in order) 1. **State it once.** Said it clearly? Don't restate it two more ways "to be sure." The reader got it; the restatement tells them you didn't trust them to. 2. **Show the implication; don't spell it out.** Put the facts that make the conclusion obvious, then *stop*. The reader completing "…so X" themselves believes it more than being told X. 3. **Cut the throat-clearing and the recap.** The opening that announces what you're about to say, the closing paragraph that summarizes what you just said — both are the reader's least favorite parts. Start at the substance; end when it's done. 4. **Preserve productive omission / ambiguity.** Where a small gap makes the reader lean in, leave it. Not every tension needs resolving in the same sentence it appears. 5. **Stop over-hedging.** The caveat that protects you from an objection nobody was going to make just dilutes the claim. Qualify what's