Directness

What directness is

Directness places the claim before its context on every Vaquum surface. The single value the parameter takes is claim-first — the main clause precedes the qualifier, the topic sentence carries the paragraph’s claim, the opening sentence of every section names the section’s claim, and the core finding sits in the first paragraph of every document. Headings name claims, captions name the claim a figure makes, and table headers name the measurement. Build-ups, suspense, deferred antecedents, and burying the lead are all forbidden.

One value, claim-first

The parameter takes exactly one value across the system, and the typed module rejects any other string at parse time. The fixed value carries an invariance: claim-first directness applies to every surface, and the validator runs the same closed rule set against each source file. Editorial pressure does not soften the order, and length pressure does not invert it: a short alert still names the problem first, a long working paper still places its finding above its method.

Sub-properties

Directness declares 13 sub-properties in its typed source. The structural axis carries sentence, paragraph, section, and document structure — every level places its claim at the head. The interface axis carries headings, captions, tables, error messages, and button labels — each names the claim or the action rather than the topic. The forbidden axis carries build-ups, suspense, deferred antecedents, and burying the lead — each is a deferral the rule excludes.

Of the 13 sub-properties, 3 are backed by typed rules in the validator. One rule is implemented and running at validation, one rule is pending typed coverage, and one rule sits at runtime-only status because its source is a UI label. The remaining sub-properties are specified in Voice-Addendum.md and await typed rules.

Directness visualised

The first exhibit below renders the scatter atom for the first time on canon. The atom takes its claim from Design-System.md § Diagram › Scatter — correlation between two continuous variables. Each point is a sentence in canon’s voice prose, plotted by its 1-indexed position in its paragraph and its word count, with the x-axis jittered per the integer-axis rule and declared in the caption. Paragraph-opening sentences carry the claim and render in accent; development sentences render in ink-soft. The 14-to-18-word cadence-measured band sits behind the data as a paper-2 region. The toggle below the diagram exposes every point as an accessible table for screen-reader and keyboard users.

Typed rules

The second exhibit below renders the typed rules read directly from @vaquum/voice/parameters/directness. Each row carries the sub-property the rule guards, the rule’s prose description, the mechanism the validator uses, and the declared severity. The single-rule-per-row layout matches the reference-table form already used on register, temperature, precision, compression, and cadence.

Mechanisms

Directness carries two mechanisms in its typed rule set, drawn from the closed set of four — regex, dictionary, parse, and editorial — declared at the validator level. One rule loads the build-ups dictionary and fails on any match. The remaining typed rules run as parse operations on the sentence and paragraph structure of the source file. No directness rule uses regex, and the editorial mechanism is reserved for sub-properties whose check the validator cannot decide alone.