Voice & content

• Write Australian English, sentence case, complete sentences on every reference surface.
• Lead with plain English. Put the statutory term beside it as a chip, never instead of it.
• Cite the instrument and the exact reference on every provision. Never invent a planning rule.
• Say "not codified", with the reason, when the scheme cannot be expressed. Never guess, and never let silence read as a pass.
• Say "not determined", with the reason, when an attribute is known-empty. Absence must never read as "none".
• Give every number its source and date, or leave it out.
• Say what is unaffected in every failure message, not just what broke.
• Write error text as the requirement, full stop. No exclamation marks, no capitals for emphasis, no emoji.
• Never use "we" or "our" in the interface. No first person; the map's verdict voice is the product voice.
• Never add commentary to a reference surface. It states facts.

A wrong planning answer is worse than none. That is the product's founding constraint, and every voice rule above is a consequence of it: an uncheckable citation is a defect, no matter how well the sentence reads. Where a thing is uncertain, the uncertainty is the answer.

Why uncodified is a first-class answer

Uncertainty is not a defect to be hidden. Silence must never read as a pass — an untested control renders as untested with a stated reason, never as an unticked box, because an unticked box reads as fine. And absence must never read as "none": "we never sourced this attribute" and "no such thing applies here" look identical on a parcel, so where an attribute is known-empty the copy says not determined, with the reason.

Why plain English leads

The statutory term is the thing a person will need if they ring the council, so it never disappears — but it is not what they came to find out. Leading with it makes a reader translate before they can act, and the translation is exactly the work the product exists to do for them.

Why reference surfaces have no commentary

A reference surface is read by somebody checking something, and a page that comments on itself is a page that has an opinion about the fact it is reporting. Capitals for emphasis, exclamation marks and emoji all make the same claim — that the reader should feel a way about this — and a reference surface has no standing to make it.

Why there is no "we"

First person puts a company between the reader and the parcel. The verdict voice is the product voice: it says what is true of the land, not what an organisation thinks about it.