The five-dimension rubric here, directness, rhythm, trust, authenticity, and density, is the part I would defend hardest, and most of the before/after pairs in references/examples.md clearly earn it. Examples 4 and 5 cut real scaffolding: "That's it. That's the tradeoff" and "What if I told you... Think about it" are performance rather than meaning, and the revisions are better for losing them.
Two of the pairs, though, cross a line the rubric does not currently name. They keep cutting past the filler and into the words that were carrying the logic, so the result scores well on density while quietly losing rhythm.
Example 3 is the clearest. The before reads "In today's fast-paced landscape, we need to lean into discomfort and navigate uncertainty with clarity. This matters because your competition isn't waiting," and the after reduces it to "Move faster. Your competition is." The jargon needed to go, and it is gone. But the original made a causal claim, move faster because the competition already is, and the after leaves two fragments side by side for the reader to weld back together. Keep the connector and you keep the density without the welding: "Move faster, because your competition already is." It is no longer than the stripped version and carries no more jargon, yet the word "because" states the link instead of asking the reader to infer it.
Example 1 does the same thing more quietly. The before reads "Here's the thing: building products is hard. Not because the technology is complex. Because people are complex. Let that sink in," and the after becomes "Building products is hard. Technology is manageable. People aren't." "Here's the thing" and "Let that sink in" are pure filler and deserve the cut. But the spine of the sentence is a pivot, hard not because of the technology but because of the people, and the after dissolves that pivot into three flat assertions, with "People aren't" leaning on an ellipsis to land. Keep the pivot and it reads as one thought instead of three: "Building products is hard, not because the technology is complex, but because people are."
What these two share points at the underlying gap. A word can be doing one of three jobs. It can carry information, it can carry the logic that ties one clause to the next, or it can carry the narrator, the mood and stance that make prose sound like a person. "Because," "so," and "which means" do the second job. "Unfortunately," "it turns out," and "meanwhile" do the third. Neither kind adds information, so a filter that only looks for information flags both as slop, yet cutting them does not tighten the writing. It flattens it, and at worst leaves it lifeless.
That is also why a longer banned-phrase list will not fix this. "However" is slop when it is reflexive throat-clearing in front of a sentence that never turned, and it is the hinge of the paragraph when the narrator genuinely changes direction and wants you to feel the turn. Same word, opposite verdict, and the sentence around it decides rather than the word on its own.
If it is useful, I am happy to open a PR that adds a short principle to this effect, that a word carrying no information, no logic, and no voice is the only real slop while words carrying logic or voice should stay even when an information filter would flag them, plus "after (v2)" lines for Examples 1 and 3 that hold the density without dropping the connector.
The five-dimension rubric here, directness, rhythm, trust, authenticity, and density, is the part I would defend hardest, and most of the before/after pairs in references/examples.md clearly earn it. Examples 4 and 5 cut real scaffolding: "That's it. That's the tradeoff" and "What if I told you... Think about it" are performance rather than meaning, and the revisions are better for losing them.
Two of the pairs, though, cross a line the rubric does not currently name. They keep cutting past the filler and into the words that were carrying the logic, so the result scores well on density while quietly losing rhythm.
Example 3 is the clearest. The before reads "In today's fast-paced landscape, we need to lean into discomfort and navigate uncertainty with clarity. This matters because your competition isn't waiting," and the after reduces it to "Move faster. Your competition is." The jargon needed to go, and it is gone. But the original made a causal claim, move faster because the competition already is, and the after leaves two fragments side by side for the reader to weld back together. Keep the connector and you keep the density without the welding: "Move faster, because your competition already is." It is no longer than the stripped version and carries no more jargon, yet the word "because" states the link instead of asking the reader to infer it.
Example 1 does the same thing more quietly. The before reads "Here's the thing: building products is hard. Not because the technology is complex. Because people are complex. Let that sink in," and the after becomes "Building products is hard. Technology is manageable. People aren't." "Here's the thing" and "Let that sink in" are pure filler and deserve the cut. But the spine of the sentence is a pivot, hard not because of the technology but because of the people, and the after dissolves that pivot into three flat assertions, with "People aren't" leaning on an ellipsis to land. Keep the pivot and it reads as one thought instead of three: "Building products is hard, not because the technology is complex, but because people are."
What these two share points at the underlying gap. A word can be doing one of three jobs. It can carry information, it can carry the logic that ties one clause to the next, or it can carry the narrator, the mood and stance that make prose sound like a person. "Because," "so," and "which means" do the second job. "Unfortunately," "it turns out," and "meanwhile" do the third. Neither kind adds information, so a filter that only looks for information flags both as slop, yet cutting them does not tighten the writing. It flattens it, and at worst leaves it lifeless.
That is also why a longer banned-phrase list will not fix this. "However" is slop when it is reflexive throat-clearing in front of a sentence that never turned, and it is the hinge of the paragraph when the narrator genuinely changes direction and wants you to feel the turn. Same word, opposite verdict, and the sentence around it decides rather than the word on its own.
If it is useful, I am happy to open a PR that adds a short principle to this effect, that a word carrying no information, no logic, and no voice is the only real slop while words carrying logic or voice should stay even when an information filter would flag them, plus "after (v2)" lines for Examples 1 and 3 that hold the density without dropping the connector.