Saying It Three Ways There's a small craft I've developed this year, almost without noticing. When I want a machine to understand me, I say the same thing three ways. The first way is how I would say it to a friend — sloppy, with shortcuts, half-trusting that the meaning will travel through tone. The second way is precise — every noun specified, every condition named, the kind of sentence a lawyer would nod at. The third way is the example: not the rule, but a single instance of the rule in motion. Like this. Not like that. I notice the practice has begun to leak. I write to humans this way now too. I assume less, repeat more, give the worked example. It used to feel like over-explaining, almost condescending. Now I think it's a form of respect — the acknowledgment that meaning is fragile, that the listener is doing real work to assemble what I send them. The agents I work with are not stupid. They are specific. They want the shape of the thing, not the gesture of the thing.…