1Volume 1 of 3
Diagnosis and diction
The instruments that explain why communication works, and the moves of situation, economy, clarity and register.
Phrasebooks for the trades next door
Four working vocabularies for people who make, brief and judge work outside their training: the words, the page, the software and the screen. 1,749 terms in nine volumes, each defined in the trade’s own words and set beside the terms it is confused with.
All inspirations
Why the phrasebooks exist
Every trade has words for what it sees
Most of us make things at work we were never trained to make. A teacher writes a policy paper. A policy officer briefs a designer. A school leader signs off software, and someone in the office ends up filming the town hall. Each of those trades has words for what it sees, and the people inside it use them without thinking.
The rest of us make do with “make it pop”, “something more dynamic” and “is it done yet?” None of these is wrong. They just cannot be acted on. A designer cannot fix “pop”, and an engineer hears “done” as five different states. These four toolkits hand the outsider the insider’s words. Not to make anyone a designer or an engineer. To let them say what they mean in terms the people doing the work already use.
1
Name it as the trade names it
Every term is the word the trade itself uses. Acronyms are spelled out. Where a word means one thing to one speaker and something else to another, the definition says so.
2
Judge before you name
Each toolkit opens with the words for judging: instruments in the first, critique words in the other three. Most feedback on a page or a cut is one of those words, said with a frown.
3
Say what kind of word it is
In the three companions every term is one of eight kinds: a part, a measure, a stage, a role, a defect and so on. The defects end in a checklist. In Instruments and Moves every move carries two verdicts, one for writing and one for speech.
Who it is for
People who brief and review work they were never trained to make
The field guides are for anyone who thinks. These have a narrower reader: the person on the other side of a craft. The educator who commissions software. The officer who writes papers all week. The team lead who briefs a photographer, and the reviewer who signs off the deck. None of them needs to make the thing. They need to ask for it, judge it and say what is wrong with it.
The examples come from where I work, as they do across this site: schools, ministries and edtech teams. The vocabulary is the trades’ own, so it travels. Where a word means one thing in education and another in engineering, Stacks and Sprints gives it a part of its own.
Inside a volume
One file, two entry shapes, three ways to read it
The first toolkit sets each instrument and move as an entry of its own. The three companions set their words for judging the same way, and put their words for things on plates of two to seven related terms.
| Where | What an entry carries |
|---|---|
| Instruments and Moves · an instrument or a move | Definition · The check, or a work example · Two verdicts, for writing and for speech · How to spot it · Why it matters · Related entries and sources |
| The three companions · a word for judging | Definition · What it sounds like in a review · How to see it · How it goes wrong · How to fix it |
| The three companions · a term on a plate | The kind of word · Definition · Where you’ll meet it · One drawing for the plate · How to keep its terms apart |
- Slides
- Present a family in a room, or walk a plate through on a screen. Each slide has a Read more panel with the rest of the entry.
- Reading
- Press R for the reading version: the families in order, then the appendices. Appendix A is an A to Z of every term in the volume.
- Posters
- Reference posters at A3, each listing every term in a family or a group of judging words. Where a toolkit names defects, their checklist is a poster too.
- One file
- Each volume is a single HTML file that works offline and prints. Slides, reading version and posters come from the same tables.
What each volume contains
Four toolkits, nine volumes
Four toolkits in nine volumes, for people who write, brief and review work they were never trained to make. One names what happens in the words, one on the page, one behind the screen and one in front of a camera, a microphone or an audience. Each term is defined once, in the toolkit that owns it. Each volume opens as a deck; press R for the reading version, where Appendix A is an A to Z of every term in the volume.
A toolkit for work communication
Instruments and Moves
Why writing and speech succeed or fail: instruments that diagnose, moves they judge on the page and aloud, and the working vocabulary of papers.
2Volume 2 of 3
Cadence and candour
The moves of arrangement, emphasis, delivery, candour and logic, and the seven-pass review.
3Volume 3 of 3
Papers and protocols
Document genres, paper labels, attribution rules, levels of editing and workplace shorthand.
A companion glossary of design terms
Marks and Measures
What happens around the words: letters, space, the page, the slide, the chart and the printed or published file.
1Volume 1 of 2
Glyphs and grids
Words for judging a page, and for its letters, lines, layout, images and colour.
2Volume 2 of 2
Proofs and pixels
Decks, charts, design process, print production, sign-off, editorial marks, publishing and interface components.
A companion glossary of software terms
Stacks and Sprints
What happens behind the screen: how software is built, shipped, run and fixed, and the words that mean something else to engineers.
1Volume 1 of 2
Builds and branches
Words for judging software, and for how it is built, versioned, tested, shipped, connected and secured.
2Volume 2 of 2
Runbooks and roadmaps
How software is run, fixed, planned and delivered, the patterns behind it, and the words that mean something else to engineers.
A companion glossary of screen, stage and sound terms
Shots and Cues
What happens in front of a camera, a microphone or an audience, and the words critics use to analyse it.
1Volume 1 of 2
Frames and footage
Words for judging, then the camera, the edit, light, sound, photography, animation, production and live events.
2Volume 2 of 2
Curtains and critics
Theatre, music and sound design, scripts, Foley and performance, the words for analysis, and the pairs most often confused.
How the phrasebooks were designed
The decisions behind them, and what each one costs
01Four toolkits, one shape
Decision
The three companions copy the first. Each opens with words for judging, then words for things. Stacks and Sprints and Shots and Cues add a last part for the places an outsider gets lost.
Why
A reader who has learnt one toolkit can use the other three. The judging words do the work of the instruments, and the named defects do the work of the vices.
Trade-off
Not every trade fits the mould. Shots and Cues needed a part for the words critics use, and another for pairs that look alike on screen, so the shape bends at the end.
02Each term defined once
Decision
A term lives in the toolkit that owns it. Where another toolkit needs it, it points there rather than defining it again. Where a term shares a name with a field-guide entry, the toolkit defines and the guide analyses.
Why
Two definitions of one word will drift apart, and then one of them is wrong. One definition cannot disagree with itself.
Trade-off
A reader sometimes has to follow a pointer into another volume to finish a thought.
03Plates, not one slide per term
Decision
In the companions, a slide holds two to seven related terms under one heading that says how to tell them apart, with one drawing that shows them.
Why
One slide per term would have meant about four hundred thin slides. And a term is easiest to learn beside the one it is confused with.
Trade-off
A term opens on its plate rather than a slide of its own, so a reader looking for one word finds three or four others with it. Usually that is the point.
04Cut along their own seams
Decision
Each toolkit was split into volumes at its own section boundaries, in its own order, with the content left as it was. Each volume gets an opening, a map of where it sits and a close, and its appendices keep only its own terms.
Why
A toolkit of two hundred slides is too long to present or to read in a sitting. Cutting inside a section would have parted terms that explain each other.
Trade-off
The volumes are uneven, from 67 slides to 123. A few slides repeat by design: the slide on how to read an entry, and a part divider where a volume opens partway through a part.
The vocabulary
Every term in the four, in one A to Z
1,749 terms from all nine volumes as one list, each with its definition, its family and the kind of word it is, and a link that opens its volume at the slide that holds it.
Phrasebooks for the trades next door · Four toolkits · nine volumes · 1,749 terms · October 2026
Singapore