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Professional Writing · Chapter 10

The Exposure Meter

Nothing in this email looks dangerous while you are writing it. That is exactly the problem: ordinary workplace sentences become legal exhibits far more often than writers expect. Click any line to swap it for a version that says the same thing without the exposure — then change who is reading, and watch the same unedited lines acquire labels.
Draft email · click any line to rewrite it
Seven lines, seven different doctrines. Each click swaps between the version people actually send and the version that survives being read out loud.
To: j.okafor@ · Cc: unit leads, vendor rep
Subject: Re: Chen departure, the Vantage quote, and the protocol language
Who is reading it, and when
The words do not change. The reader does.
Live exposure
Weighted by how badly each doctrine tends to go, not by how bad the sentence feels.
0exposure points still in the draft
out of 170 in the version as sent