Academic Style

The expansion of CLAUDE.md → Claim Discipline and the "Never overstate" clause of the cardinal rule. Read this before drafting prose, and before any task the prompt-router flags as [Claim calibration].

Calibration is not hedging-for-its-own-sake. It is matching the strength of the verb and quantifier to the strength of the evidence, so a skeptical Reviewer 2 signs off on the sentence. Overclaiming is the most common way a true result becomes an unsupportable one.

If STYLE.md exists, it is the manuscript's voice source of truth (tense, person, terminology) — read it first; it overrides the defaults here.

The verb ladder (strength of assertion)

Pick the weakest verb the evidence supports, not the strongest you can get away with. Top = strongest claim; reserve it for the strongest evidence.

proves            ← mathematical proof, or a deductively closed argument. Almost never
                    licensed by empirical data. Avoid in experimental work.
demonstrates      ← direct, controlled experimental evidence; the effect is shown, not inferred.
shows             ← clear, replicated empirical support. The workhorse for your own solid results.
establishes       ← shows + settles a previously open question.
indicates         ← the evidence points one way but is not decisive.
suggests          ← consistent with the claim; plausible but underdetermined.
is consistent with← the data do not contradict the claim (weakest positive — does NOT confirm it).
is associated with← a statistical relationship, no causal direction asserted. Default for observational data.
may / might / could← possibility only; flag for a hypothesis or a Discussion conjecture.

The quantifier ladder runs in parallel — calibrate scope as carefully as strength:

all / every  >  most  >  many  >  some  >  a few  >  (none)
always       >  usually / typically  >  often  >  sometimes  >  occasionally
in general   >  across the tested conditions  >  in our sample  >  in this single case

Rule: "in our sample" is not "in general"; "is associated with" is not "causes"; "suggests" is not "proves" (CLAUDE.md). Do not climb the ladder to sound confident.

Before → after: overclaim to calibrated

Pattern: cut the intensifier, drop the verb one rung, bound the scope to what was tested, and attach the number or the citation that licenses the claim.

Hedge appropriately — neither flat nor mushy

Two failure modes, both wrong:

• Under-hedged (overclaim): every result stated flat-out. Reviewer 2 attacks the weakest one and the paper bleeds credibility.
• Over-hedged (mush): "it may possibly be the case that results could perhaps suggest…". Stacked hedges read as evasion and bury the finding.

Hedge once, at the right rung. One calibrated verb carries the uncertainty; do not pile may + suggests + possibly on one clause. Where the evidence is strong (your clean primary result), state it plainly — false modesty is its own miscalibration.

✗ over-hedged:  "These data may possibly suggest that accuracy could be associated with task horizon."
✗ under-hedged: "Task horizon determines accuracy."
✓ calibrated:   "Tool-call accuracy decreased with task horizon across the tested range (fig:horizon)."

Tense conventions

The default scheme (a STYLE.md may override per venue):

Methods and Results in the past tense, intro in the present, is the single most load-bearing tense rule (CLAUDE.md → Claim Discipline). Tense drift inside a section is an unrelated change — match the surrounding voice.

Active vs passive

Use active when the agent matters and naming it adds information ("We sampled…", "The model predicts…"). Use passive in Methods where the actor is obvious and the object is the focus ("Tasks were sampled from the held-out split") — the standard register in much of the ML and NLP literature. Do not contort prose to avoid "we" if the venue accepts it; do not over-use passive until every sentence is actor-less fog. Whatever the manuscript already does, match it.

One term per concept

CLAUDE.md → Claim Discipline: do not alternate "tool-call accuracy" / "success rate" / "correctness" / "task success" for the same quantity. Synonym-rotation reads as literary polish but in science it signals different quantities and confuses the reader. Lock the vocabulary in MANUSCRIPT_MAP.md → Terminology (or STYLE.md), then use the locked term every time. If two terms are genuinely in play, surface the conflict and pick one — do not blend.

Reader-first structure

• Topic sentences. The first sentence of each paragraph states the paragraph's claim. A reader skimming topic sentences should get the argument.
• Given–new. Open a sentence with information the reader already has (the given); end with the new information. This threads paragraphs and makes prose feel inevitable rather than listy.
• One paragraph, one point. If a paragraph makes two claims, split it.
• Signposting, sparingly. "First… second…" and "In contrast" earn their place when they track real logical structure; as decoration they are filler.

Cut the AI slop and the throat-clearing

Calibrated academic prose is terse. Strip the tics that mark machine-generated or padded writing:

The unicode-scan hook flags smart quotes / non-ASCII punctuation that creep into LaTeX source — keep source ASCII (--, ---, \%, \&) unless the manuscript deliberately uses unicode.

Concision

Prefer the shorter form when meaning is preserved: "in order to" → "to"; "due to the fact that" → "because"; "a number of" → "several" or the actual count; "is able to" → "can"; "utilize" → "use"; "methodology" → "method" (unless you mean the study of methods). Every word should survive the question "does the section's claim still stand without it?" If yes, cut it.

After any correction

A recurring style note from the author or reviewer ("you keep overclaiming in the Discussion", "you keep rotating synonyms") is a rule. Log it under tasks/reviews/ (_TEMPLATE.md), tag applies_to: [overclaim] or [voice], promote to ## Top Rules if it recurs (CLAUDE.md → Self-Improvement Loop).