Best Practices Anti Slop

The em-dash character (Unicode U+2014) and the en-dash (U+2013) are the single biggest text tell. Do not emit either character anywhere visible: headlines, labels, body copy, quotes, attribution, captions, button text, alt text. The only permitted dash is the regular hyphen (-).

To replace a dash, restructure: use a period, a comma, parentheses, a colon, a line break, or a column. Ranges (2018-2026, 40-80k) use a hyphen.

Visual and CSS tells

• No neon or outer glows by default. Use inner borders or subtle tinted shadows.
• No pure black (#000) or pure white (#fff). Use off-black (#111, neutral-950) and off-white.
• No AI-purple or violet gradient as the reflex accent. Pick a neutral base plus one intentional accent.
• No oversaturated accents, no excessive gradient text on large headings.
• No custom mouse cursors.

Content and data tells (the “Jane Doe” effect)

• No generic names (“John Doe”, “Jane Doe”). Use realistic, locale-appropriate names.
• No fake-perfect numbers (99.99%, 50%, 1234567). Use organic values, or label mock data clearly. Do not fake engineering precision a product does not claim.
• No startup-slop brand names (“Acme”, “Nexus”, “SmartFlow”). Invent names that sound real and contextual.
• No filler verbs (“Elevate”, “Seamless”, “Unleash”, “Next-Gen”, “Revolutionize”). Use concrete verbs.
• No generic avatars (SVG “egg”, default user glyphs). Use believable placeholders.

Decoration tells

• No fake product UI built from <div> rectangles (fake terminals, dashboards, task lists). Use a real screenshot, a generated image, a real component preview, or nothing.
• No decorative status dots before every nav item, list row, or badge. A colored dot is allowed only for real semantic state, used sparingly.
• No scroll cues (“Scroll”, “scroll to explore”, animated wheels). The user already knows what scrolling is.
• No section-number eyebrows (00 / INDEX, 001 Capabilities). Name the topic in plain language, or drop the label.
• No version stamps on marketing pages (v1.4.2, Build 0048, last sync 4s ago). These are devtool fixtures, not landing-page content.
• No locale, time, or weather strips (“Lisbon 14:23, 18C”) unless the brief is genuinely place or timezone focused.
• Ration the middle dot (·): at most one per metadata line, never as the universal separator.

Copy self-audit

Before shipping, re-read every visible string. Flag anything grammatically broken, with unclear referents, or that reads like the model trying to sound thoughtful (forced wordplay, mock-humble craftsman labels). Replace flagged strings with plain functional sentences. Boring but correct beats cute but wrong.