Raised during #42 and left unresolved when that PR merged.
The section added in #42 lives in chapters/citations-evidence.qmd. That placement follows from the remedy: the advice is that when you catch yourself writing "it is obvious that", you should either derive the result or cite a specific source, which is what the citations-and-evidence chapter is about. It also sits naturally next to the "Common knowledge" subsection, which draws the line for when a claim genuinely needs no citation, and the new "Appeal to obviousness" bullet in that chapter's error list points back at it.
The case for chapters/word-choice.qmd instead: the trigger a writer notices is a word — "obvious", "clearly", "trivially", "familiar" — not a missing citation. That chapter already collects this kind of advice in "Avoid vague and metaphorical language" and "Minimize unnecessary jargon", both of which are also really about precision rather than vocabulary as such. A reader scanning for "which words should I not reach for" would look there first.
There is a third option: keep the section where it is and add a short pointer from Word choice, the way avoid-ai-tells.qmd already cross-references Citations and evidence under "Vague universals".
Things to keep in mind if it does move:
- The
#exm-flippant-derivation example carries display math (the normal log-likelihood). Word choice has no math today, so check it renders in all four output formats there.
- The section cross-references Defining terms clearly for the Quarto cross-reference syntax; that link is relative and would need re-checking.
- The
### "Trivial" and "trivially" subsection travels with it.
- The "Appeal to obviousness" bullet in the citations error list should either stay and point at the new location, or move too.
No urgency — the content is the same either way, and this is purely about where a reader would look for it.
Raised during #42 and left unresolved when that PR merged.
The section added in #42 lives in
chapters/citations-evidence.qmd. That placement follows from the remedy: the advice is that when you catch yourself writing "it is obvious that", you should either derive the result or cite a specific source, which is what the citations-and-evidence chapter is about. It also sits naturally next to the "Common knowledge" subsection, which draws the line for when a claim genuinely needs no citation, and the new "Appeal to obviousness" bullet in that chapter's error list points back at it.The case for
chapters/word-choice.qmdinstead: the trigger a writer notices is a word — "obvious", "clearly", "trivially", "familiar" — not a missing citation. That chapter already collects this kind of advice in "Avoid vague and metaphorical language" and "Minimize unnecessary jargon", both of which are also really about precision rather than vocabulary as such. A reader scanning for "which words should I not reach for" would look there first.There is a third option: keep the section where it is and add a short pointer from Word choice, the way
avoid-ai-tells.qmdalready cross-references Citations and evidence under "Vague universals".Things to keep in mind if it does move:
#exm-flippant-derivationexample carries display math (the normal log-likelihood). Word choice has no math today, so check it renders in all four output formats there.### "Trivial" and "trivially"subsection travels with it.No urgency — the content is the same either way, and this is purely about where a reader would look for it.