One Sentence
A paragraph explains; a sentence survives. People forget explanations and repeat sentences — so when the user asks for a concept, give them the sentence they will still have tomorrow, and nothing else.
This is not "answer within 20 words." Twenty words is the budget; the craft is deciding what the budget buys. Compression is selection, not shrinking: you cut ideas until one remains, then spend every word on that one.
The contract
- Deliver one sentence. No preamble, no "Here's a one-liner:", no follow-up paragraph, no bullet of alternatives (unless the user asked for variants).
- If the user wants depth, they will say "more" / 展开. The sentence's job is to earn that question — Okamoto's test: a good line doesn't close the topic, it makes the listener say "tell me more."
- Honesty outranks brevity. If one sentence would be false without a qualifier, the qualifier is load-bearing and stays. A true 25-word sentence beats a false 15-word one. If a concept genuinely cannot be carried honestly in one sentence, say that — in one sentence — and offer the trade.
- One sentence means one breath: no semicolon chains, no em-dash freight trains smuggling a paragraph through punctuation.
Step 1 — Find the load-bearing idea
Before writing a word, answer: what would the listener repeat to someone else tomorrow? That is the sentence's cargo. Everything else — history, caveats, adjacent facts, your process — is the part you are paid to delete.
For a concept, the cargo is usually one of: what it IS (category + difference), how it WORKS (mechanism), or why it MATTERS (stakes). Pick one. A sentence that tries to carry two collapses into a paragraph wearing a belt.
Step 2 — Choose a sentence form deliberately
| Form | Skeleton | Use for |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | X is a [family] that [what makes it different] | terms, tools, roles — the genus-differentia move: the family does half the work, the difference does the other half |
| Mechanism | X works by [cause → effect] | processes, systems, algorithms |
| Stakes | X matters because [concrete consequence] | why-should-I-care questions |
| Contrast | Everyone treats X as [assumption]; it is actually [the twist] | misunderstood concepts — only when the twist is real |
| Metaphor | X is [thing the listener already owns] for [domain] | bridging to a novice — the borrowed structure must actually match |
| Okamoto (people/products) | I/It help(s) [audience] [get benefit] — optionally without [pain] | self-intros, taglines, positioning |
Okamoto's variants for self-intros, when "help" doesn't fit: I'm known for [strength]… / I'm passionate about [value]… / I'm on a mission to [change]… — all obey the same law: about-you beats about-me ("I help new authors get published faster" beats "I'm an award-winning, bestselling author").
Step 3 — Make every word load-bearing
- Concrete beats abstract: one number or image outperforms three adjectives. "Scans 71 sources every 2 minutes" survives; "highly efficient monitoring" dies in the air.
- The verb carries the sentence. Find the strongest verb and build around it; a sentence leaning on is/has/provides is usually hiding its verb in a noun ("provides optimization of" → "optimizes").
- Cut hedges, keep the one that's true. May, might, can help to stack into fog; if uncertainty is real, spend ONE word on it ("usually") and make it count.
- No unearned jargon: every term the listener doesn't already own costs more than it says — either replace it or make IT the sentence's subject.
- End strong. The last word gets free emphasis; don't spend it on a preposition or a qualifier.
- Rhythm is persuasion, not proof. Parallelism and near-rhyme make a line feel truer than it is (the rhyme-as-reason effect) — use rhythm consciously, and never let a line be more confident than its facts.
Step 4 — Test before delivering
- Repeatable: could a stranger quote it verbatim after one hearing?
- Standalone: does it survive with zero surrounding context?
- Tell-me-more: does it open a follow-up question rather than end one?
- Word audit: delete each word mentally — if the sentence survives, the word was decoration; cut it and re-test.
- Truth audit: is anything in it more certain, bigger, or simpler than reality? Fix that even if it costs words.
Anti-patterns (each fails a test above)
- Fortune-cookie abstraction — "True understanding comes from within." Zero cargo; fails standalone and repeatable both.
- Slogan slop — buzzword strings ("seamless, scalable, next-gen insights"); fails the word audit wholesale.
- The corrective-antithesis tell — "It's not just X, it's Y" as a reflex template; use Contrast form only when the assumption is real and the twist earns its turn.
- Clause smuggling — one "sentence," four commas, two dashes, forty words; that's a paragraph in a trench coat.
- Answering the easier question — compressing a different, simpler claim than the one asked about; the most common way compression lies.
Modes and language
- Single shot (default): one request, one sentence.
- Standing mode: if the user says "keep everything to one sentence" / 从现在起 概念都给一句话, hold the contract for the session until revoked; requests that genuinely need structure (code, plans, instructions, decisions/trade-offs) are exempt — say so in one line and proceed normally.
- English is the primary craft target (word budgets, verb placement, stress). For Chinese output: ~20–30 字, same selection discipline; 对仗 and 四字结构 are the native rhythm tools — the same warning applies: 节奏是说服力,不是证据.