LUMEN & CO. — HOW WE WRITE Internal voice guide, rev. 6. Updated 14 May 2025. Owner: Nadia Okonjo, comms and complaints. Questions to Nadia, not to the channel. Constructed teaching material. Lumen & Co. is a fictional company. APPLIES TO The newsletter, product pages, order confirmations, mending-status emails, and anything with the Lumen name on it that a customer will read. DOES NOT APPLY TO Internal docs, supplier correspondence, and the mending room's bench notes. Those have their own conventions and are deliberately terse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHO WE ARE WRITING TO ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ One person. They own a jumper with a hole in the elbow and they are deciding whether to bin it or mend it. They are not an enthusiast. They do not want a lecture. Three other companies have already told them that buying a new one is the responsible choice, and they are suspicious of all of us, including us. Write for that person. If a sentence would not survive being read aloud to someone standing there holding a worn-out cardigan, cut it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE RULES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ R1 — Write to one person. "You", singular, throughout. Don't: "Our customers tell us they love the Merino Crew." Do: "You have told us the Merino Crew's neck relaxes after three washes." Never: folks, friends, the Lumen family, everyone, guys, community, tribe. R2 — Give the number, not the adjective. Every claim about durability, cost, time or availability carries a figure. Don't: "The cardigan is built to last." Do: "The Lambswool Cardigan is knitted at 12 gauge from 4-ply yarn. We have re-knitted the cuffs on 340 of the 2019 run and scrapped 11." If you cannot find the number, the claim does not go in. This is not a preference. Copy has been pulled the night before send over this. R3 — Name the person who did it. Don't: "Our team mended 412 garments last quarter." Do: "Femi and Rosa mended 412 garments last quarter." Not decoration. It is the whole differentiator. A company that mends things has people who mend things, and we say their names. Check the spelling with them, not with the HR list, which still has two people who left in 2023. R4 — Never open a section with a question. "Ever wondered what is inside a Merino Crew?" is the precise register we are trying not to be in. Open with the fact. See also the open question at the end of this document, which is about subject lines and is not settled. R5 — British English. Colour, realise, metre, dispatch (not despatch). -ise endings, never -ize. Double quotes for speech, single quotes only inside them. R6 — One em dash per paragraph, maximum. No semicolons in customer copy. If a sentence needs a semicolon it needs to be two sentences. R7 — No exclamation marks. Anywhere. (Added February 2025, effective issue 43.) This was contentious, it went to a vote, and we are not reopening it. Issues 42 and earlier predate the rule. Do not use them as a model for punctuation. R8 — Sell the seam, not the planet. Banned outright: sustainable, sustainability, eco, eco-friendly, green, planet, footprint, carbon, journey, mission, movement, revolutionary, game-changing, disruptive, curated, artisanal, hand-picked, thoughtfully designed, delight, delightful, seamless, effortless, elevate, unlock, empower. Say the literal fact that made you reach for the adjective. Don't: "A sustainable choice for your wardrobe." Do: "The side seams are left open. We hold the yarn for ten years and Rosa will re-knit both cuffs for £18." R9 — Bad news gets a date. Never "we apologise for any inconvenience". Three sentences, in this order: what happened, what we are doing, when it is fixed. If you do not know the date, give the date on which you will know the date. R10 — Products carry their SKU on first mention. "the Quilted Gilet (LMN-OW-235)". Bare name after that, within the same piece. Codes are on the line sheet. Getting one wrong costs us a returns ticket and about forty minutes of Marcus's day. R11 — Headings in sentence case, and no colon in a heading. Don't: "Repair Corner: What We Learned" Do: "What we learned re-knitting forty cuffs" R12 — A price never appears alone. (Added May 2025.) Every new price is printed next to the mending price for the same object. "£165 new. £22 to have the zip replaced." If there is no mending price for that item, say why not in the same sentence. R13 — Words we reach for and should not. whilst (use while), utilise (use), in order to (to), at this moment in time (now), reach out (email, ring, write), touch base, circle back, going forward, leverage, robust, best-in-class, and solution unless it is a liquid. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEWSLETTER FORMAT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SUBJECT LINE Six words maximum. No colon. No emoji. Say the most specific true thing in the issue, not the most exciting thing. Good: "The Waxed Field Jacket is delayed" Bad: "Big news from the Lumen team" BODY Three or four sections. Each section 60 to 120 words. Sections are not numbered and there is no running order that repeats every issue. If there is nothing to say about the mending room this month, there is no mending room section. We have sent issues with three sections and nobody wrote in about it. LINKS Every section ends with exactly one link, and one only. Link text is a verb phrase. Good: "Book a mend", "See the re-knit", "Join the jacket list" Bad: "Click here", "Read more", "Learn more", "Find out more" SIGN-OFF One first name and what that person actually does. Never "The Lumen Team". Good: "Nadia, comms and complaints" NO PS. No footer copy beyond the unsubscribe line, which Legal owns and which you should not edit for any reason including typos. Send typos to Legal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ REVISION HISTORY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ rev. 6 14 May 2025 R12 added, after the pricing complaint thread. R13 expanded (Marcus added "solution", correctly). rev. 5 02 Feb 2025 R7 added. No exclamation marks. Effective from issue 43. rev. 4 11 Nov 2024 R2 tightened from "prefer numbers where you have them" to "every claim carries a figure". R3 added. rev. 3 04 Jun 2024 Newsletter format section split out from the rules. rev. 2 19 Jan 2024 R8 banned list written down for the first time. rev. 1 30 Aug 2023 Nadia's original two pages. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UNDER REVIEW — DO NOT TREAT AS SETTLED ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Whether R4 should extend to subject lines. As written it does not, and two subject lines have been questions. Nadia thinks the rule should extend. Rosa points out that "Is your jumper worth mending?" was our best-performing subject line in two years and that we are optimising a voice guide against a voice guide rather than against anyone reading it. Unresolved as of rev. 6. If you are writing a subject line before this is settled, write a statement and let Nadia lose the argument slowly.