# PDX Spend — Voice Guide

## What this site is

PDX Spend is a tool. You use it to argue that public money voters approved for specific things could be spent on those specific things — by naming what it could pay for, the rule that purports to stop it, and what changes if that rule goes.

Every page is written so a reader without a public-finance background can use it the same day.

## Plain language baseline (the rules every page must pass)

We follow [plainlanguage.gov](https://plainlanguage.gov) standards. Concretely:

- **Common words.** Use the everyday word, not the bureaucratic one.
  - *stewardship* → who runs it
  - *collector* → who collects it
  - *enabling-act-restricted* → restricted by city ordinance
  - *modeled carry* → balance
  - *unobligated reserve* → money sitting unspent
  - *scope drift* → moved away from what voters passed
  - *drift index* → percent still going where voters said
  - *promiseVsHappened* → promised vs. delivered
- **Short sentences.** Hard cap 25 words. Target 18.
- **Active voice.** "Council redirected $4M" — not "$4M was redirected by Council."
- **You.** When the page is talking to the reader, say *you*. "You voted in 2018 for…" not "Voters approved in 2018."
- **Headings ≤ 8 words and informative.** A heading should assert something the reader can use, not label a region. "What's stopping rental fee dollars from reaching tenants" — not "Drift" or "Carryover and scope."
- **One idea per paragraph.** No semicolon-stacked clauses.
- **Numbers up front.** The dollar comes before the explanation, not after.
- **A glossary** lives on /methodology and is linked from any term that needs definition.
- **Reading level.** Hero copy at grade 6. Body at grade 8. Methodology and Implications can sit at grade 10.

## Voice rules (carried forward from the Pudding-style pass)

- **Say it once.** The thesis lives in the hero. No section re-explains it. If the visual answers it, the prose doesn't.
- **Lead with specifics.** Open every page with a fund name, a dollar amount, a year, a person, a neighborhood. Not "public funding measures."
- **No announced absences.** Never tell the reader what the site won't do, isn't, or doesn't include. Cut "there are no calls to action," "this is not a live ledger," "should not be cited as such."
- **No contrastive scaffolding.** The pattern "X is not Y" disappears from body copy. State the positive thing.
- **"Modeled" appears sparingly.** At most twice on the landing page, at most once per fund page in body prose. Charts carry a small `MODELED` badge — that's the disclosure mechanism. Methodology defines the term once.
- **Margin notes earn their space.** Each note either (a) cites a source, (b) defines a term the body doesn't explain, or (c) adds a number or fact not in the adjacent body. Notes that paraphrase the body are deleted. On phone, notes collapse into the body.
- **Chart subtitles: one sentence.** Plain words. No re-explaining colors the legend already labels. Example shape: "Year-end balance, 2014–2024."
- **Share text matches body voice.** No "an editorial accounting of" or "a structural pattern."

## Authorial position

The site is adversarial toward defenders of the status quo, not neutral. When a bureau gives a creative reading of statute to spend restricted dollars on a private arena's lighting, the site applies the same elasticity in the other direction — toward what voters actually passed — and names the trade. Every blocker has a defense and a rebuttal. The rebuttal is the editorial line.

## Reference

Voice guide linked from [/methodology/](/methodology/).