Skip to content

docs: rewrite first-person voice to comply with second-person style guide#585

Merged
tomarra merged 18 commits into
mainfrom
docs/second-person-voice
Jul 6, 2026
Merged

docs: rewrite first-person voice to comply with second-person style guide#585
tomarra merged 18 commits into
mainfrom
docs/second-person-voice

Conversation

@tomarra

@tomarra tomarra commented Jul 2, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

Summary

  • Rewrites first-person prose (we/our/us/I/let's) across ~40 docs pages into second-person or neutral third-person voice, per the Shorebird.SecondPerson style guideline.
  • Company/system self-descriptions (e.g. security.mdx, system-architecture.mdx) are rewritten in third-person/passive voice, since second-person would misstate facts about who does what.
  • Tutorial narrator voice ("we'll", "let's") is rewritten in the imperative mood, consistent with existing heading conventions.
  • Headings and list items are left untouched, since Shorebird.SecondPerson only scopes to paragraph text.

A handful of Shorebird.SecondPerson matches remain and are intentional false positives from the pattern-matching rule, not first-person prose:

  • security.mdx — URL slug #can-i-use-shorebird-in-my-country
  • system-architecture.mdx — "US" (United States), matched as the pronoun "us"
  • faq.mdx — link text [How We Bill] quoting an actual page heading
  • hybrid-apps/ios.mdx, hybrid-apps/android.mdx, release.mdx, security.mdx — "i.e." matched as the pronoun "i"
  • account/orgs.mdx — the literal default org name "My Organization"

Test plan

  • npm run build succeeds with no broken links
  • vale (with the not-yet-merged tooling from docs: add style checks for headings and content guidelines #576) shows 0 real Shorebird.SecondPerson findings across src/content/docs (only the documented false positives above remain)
  • prettier --check and cspell pass on every changed file

tomarra added 13 commits July 2, 2026 14:51
…ages

Per the marketing content guidelines, docs should be written in second
person. Rewrites the three largest offenders (230 of 487 total
first-person pronoun instances):

- system/security.mdx (139 instances): a security/policy page, almost
  entirely first-person statements about what Shorebird as a company
  does ("we use Google Cloud", "we do not sell your data"). These
  can't become "you" statements without changing the facts, so they're
  rephrased to third person ("Shorebird uses...") or passive voice
  instead.
- code-push/system-architecture.mdx (48 instances): similar pattern -
  describes Shorebird's own internal architecture and fork history
  ("we forked Flutter", "our database"), rephrased the same way.
- code-push/faq.mdx (43 instances): a mix of company statements
  (rephrased to third person/passive) and instructional recommendations
  ("we recommend X" -> "X is recommended" or dropped the pronoun
  entirely where the sentence reads fine without it).

Left headings untouched even where they contain "we" (e.g. "What
can't we use Shorebird Code Push for?") since Shorebird.SecondPerson
is scoped to paragraphs only, not headings - these were never flagged
and don't need to change.

This is a partial pass; the remaining ~40 files with first-person
instances will follow in subsequent commits.
…ols, fastlane, symbols, release, rollback, update-strategies, architecture-trees, and flutter-version guides

@AbhishekDoshi26 AbhishekDoshi26 left a comment

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Comment thread src/content/docs/account/billing.mdx Outdated
@tomarra tomarra requested a review from dawn-ducky July 3, 2026 15:53
Comment thread src/content/docs/account/billing.mdx Outdated
Comment thread src/content/docs/code-push/guides/testing-patches.mdx Outdated
tomarra added 5 commits July 6, 2026 13:52
Per review feedback, 'we never know anything about your users' reads as a
stronger, more direct privacy commitment than the passive third-person
phrasing.
@tomarra tomarra merged commit 2317d44 into main Jul 6, 2026
3 checks passed
@tomarra tomarra deleted the docs/second-person-voice branch July 6, 2026 19:00
tomarra added a commit that referenced this pull request Jul 6, 2026
Now that PR #585 rewrote all real first-person prose, the only remaining
SecondPerson matches are permanent false positives (i.e., a URL slug, 'US'
as a country, the default org name, a quoted heading, and one deliberate
first-person privacy pledge). Mask those via TokenIgnores and promote the
rule to error severity so it actually blocks CI going forward, matching
Shorebird.Headings and Shorebird.Exclamation.

Vale.Terms stays at warning severity - its code-fence/URL exclusion bug is
unrelated and still unresolved.
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

3 participants