---
name: convention-document-opening
type: convention
description: How a client-facing prose document opens — the fixed stack of title, byline, headline, governing thought and TL;DR, with the criteria a governing thought must meet and the drafting technique that reaches one without burning the Owner's review on it. Read before writing or reviewing the opening of any document a client will read, and before offering a first draft of one. Narrative structure for a deck is held in convention-deck-narrative and is out of scope here.
license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
---

# Document opening

The opening of a client-facing document is where the reader decides what the document is for. Nothing in canon fixed it, so every document re-derived it — once at the cost of about fifteen exchanges of the Owner's review, on a draft whose governing thought was a conclusion and repeated the TL;DR. This convention fixes the layers and what each one is for. It holds for prose documents a client reads; it is silent on decks.

## The stack — five layers, in this order

Title, byline, headline, governing thought, TL;DR, then the body. The order is the rule: each layer answers a question the one above it opened, and a layer that answers a question already answered is the defect this convention exists to prevent.

## The headline

A short line naming the journey and the goal. No figures and no conclusion.

## The governing thought

One sentence framing the job the document serves. It states what has to be understood and gives no answer. It is built from the client's own written objective and from the actions already taken, so it is theirs before it is ours.

Eight criteria, all of which hold:

1. **One idea, and it frames rather than concludes.** The sentence names the job the document serves; a sentence that states the answer is a conclusion and belongs in the body.
2. **A different job from the TL;DR** — no shared wording and no shared figures.
3. **No data point.**
4. **Speaks to the client's goal, in the client's own words.**
5. **Honest to the evidence** — no cause claimed that the evidence cannot support.
6. **Short and plain** — about 25 words or fewer, no jargon, and not built on the "X, not Y" construction.
7. **Opens the next step without prescribing it.** It frames what has to be understood and names no fix; prescribing the remedy here is the same failure as criterion 1, one layer further on.
8. **Passes the retell test** — a reader could tell a colleague what was found and why it matters.

Criteria 1 and 7 are one rule seen twice: the governing thought frames, it does not conclude and it does not prescribe. The accepted forms are question-led or situation-led.

## The TL;DR

The route through the document — today, what we see, quick fixes, next. The evidence figures appear here and nowhere above it.

## The technique that reaches one

1. Define the criteria first, then draft. Drafting first produces a sentence that has to be argued against rather than measured.
2. Offer two versions at opposite ends of a spectrum, so the Owner reacts to the range rather than to one option.
3. Read the client's written objective and the actions already taken, and tie the wording to both.
4. Offer the headline and the governing thought as separate layers, then combine them with the TL;DR beneath.

## Body companion

Where the body is a set of observations: each observation ends with a theme tag in square brackets, the quick fixes are grouped under the same tags, and a caveat states that the fixes are light hypotheses with the robust strategy to follow.

## What this convention does not hold

**Decks.** A deck's narrative structure is `convention-deck-narrative` and its visual weight is `convention-deck`. The stack above was evidenced against prose documents only, and is not stretched to a format it was not evidenced against — the same boundary `convention-deck-narrative` draws in the other direction.

**Voice.** Register comes from the domain's own voice convention; this one fixes the layers and their jobs.

## Quick checklist before a document goes to a client

- [ ] Five layers present, in order: title, byline, headline, governing thought, TL;DR?
- [ ] Headline names the journey and the goal, with no figure and no conclusion?
- [ ] Governing thought frames the job and states no answer and no fix?
- [ ] Governing thought and TL;DR share no wording and no figures?
- [ ] Governing thought under about 25 words, no jargon, no data point?
- [ ] Governing thought traceable to the client's written objective and to the actions taken?
- [ ] Every evidence figure at TL;DR level or below?
- [ ] Retell test passed?