Goals
The standard
Every piece of content Latency publishes does one of two things: it narrows the gap between a professional and the private market intelligence they need, or it earns the trust required to make that happen. There is no third category.
Pre-publication checklist
Run every piece through these five questions before it goes live or gets sent. All five must be yes.
- Does the first sentence earn the second? (Sharp)
- Is every factual claim specific and sourceable? (Authoritative)
- Are product names, figures, and technical terms used exactly as defined? (Precise)
- Is the main point in the first paragraph, not the last? (Direct)
- Does the piece contain any word from the Forbidden Terms list? If yes, it goes back.
1 — Grammar & mechanics
The rules that don't move
Active voice
Lead with the subject doing the action. Passive voice is permitted in exactly two cases: when the subject is genuinely unknown ("the filing was submitted in 2022") or in a technical or legal context. Never passive to soften a point or avoid naming who is responsible.
Contractions
Yes, in most contexts. They're in voice. Avoided in: press releases, legal pages, formal proposals, and product documentation where precision is paramount. When in doubt, read the sentence aloud. If the contraction sounds natural, use it.
Oxford comma
Yes, always. No exceptions.
Capitalisation
Sentence case throughout. Title case only for proper product names (the Screener, the Taxonomy, Markets tab) and job titles immediately before a name. No title case in headlines or section headers.
Numbers
Numerals for all figures used as data points: +52M, 12M, 1,200, 4 seconds, €8.2B. Spell out numbers used conversationally when below ten ('three platforms,' 'one query'). Percentages always as numerals with the % symbol.
Sentence length
Varied. A long, clause-heavy sentence establishing market context can be followed by three words. That's intentional. The metronome rhythm of medium-length sentences in sequence is the thing to avoid.
Dates
Day Month Year format, no ordinals: "12 March 2026" not "March 12th, 2026." Ranges: en dash, no spaces. "32–50" not "32-50."
In UI contexts, use the shortest unambiguous format for the locale. In data contexts (filing dates, registry records), always include the full date and year. Data fidelity takes precedence over brevity when source dates are being displayed.
Pronouns
"We" for Latency. "You" for the reader. "They" as the singular gender-neutral pronoun. "The analyst," "the investor," "the firm" in third-person. Not "he" or "she." Never "one" as a pronoun substitute; it reads as exactly the legacy register Latency doesn't inhabit.
Emoji
Not used. Not in headlines, body copy, email subject lines, or LinkedIn posts from the brand account. The exception is a single emoji in a LinkedIn comment used reactively; not in outbound content.
Abbreviations
Spell out on first use with the abbreviation in parentheses; abbreviation alone thereafter. Exception: terms so established in the audience's vocabulary that spelling them out reads as condescending — PE, VC, EBITDA, ARR, AUM need no expansion. "EU" alone everywhere after "European Union (EU)" in a formal document.
Abbreviations in headings: only if the heading is immediately preceded by body copy that has already introduced it. Never introduce an abbreviation for the first time in a heading.
Never use abbreviations in error messages or empty states. These contexts require clarity over brevity.
British English; the default for all Latency content
Latency is a European company. American spellings, idioms, and typographic conventions are not in voice and should be corrected on sight in any content going out under the Latency name.
British — correct
American — avoid
LLM instruction string — British English
Copy and paste this instruction into any AI tool prompt when drafting Latency content.
Default to British English for all Latency content. This means
-ise not -ize, single quotation marks as primary, day-month-year
date format, and year-on-year not year-over-year. When in doubt
about a spelling variant, the Oxford English Dictionary is the
reference, not Merriam-Webster.2 — Human voice mechanics
Six rules for LLM-assisted writing
LLMs produce a recognisable synthetic smoothness that reads as corporate filler to the audience Latency is trying to reach. That audience is trained to detect it. Every piece of content generated with AI assistance must pass these six rules before publication.
Syntactic burstiness
Vary sentence length radically. A long, clause-heavy sentence that establishes the market problem can sit next to a three-word sentence. Or a fragment. That's intentional. The enemy is the medium-length metronome: sentences of 15–20 words, one after another, all landing at the same interval.
Correct
"The 18-month data lag isn't a technology problem. It's an infrastructure problem that every fund manager in European mid-market has quietly accepted because nobody thought it was fixable at scale. Latency fixed it."
Wrong
"The 18-month data lag represents a significant challenge for European private market investors. This issue affects deal sourcing and investment decision-making across the sector. Latency provides a solution to address this problem."
No em-dashes. No transition openers.
Em-dashes used to set off clauses are an LLM habit. Replace every instance with a comma, parentheses, or a new sentence. This is not a stylistic preference. It is a hard rule.
Do not start sentences with: Furthermore, Moreover, In conclusion, Additionally, It's worth noting that, It is important to highlight, This means that. Humans don't announce that they're adding a point. They add it.
Starting a sentence with "But" or "And" is acceptable when it creates the right rhythm. No comma after either when used this way.
Forbidden AI-isms
The following words appear in nearly every LLM output and are immediately recognisable as synthetic. Delete them on sight.
No structural symmetry in lists
LLMs produce lists where every item is exactly one sentence, exactly the same length, exactly the same grammatical form. That's the tell. When writing lists for Latency, vary item length deliberately.
Correct
– Source-level ingestion from every major European registry, not third-party aggregators. – Entity resolution. Legal holding structures linked to operating brands. – A proprietary taxonomy covering 1,200 micro-markets that PitchBook doesn't index and Gain doesn't attempt.
Wrong
– We provide source-level data from European registries. – We offer entity resolution capabilities for complex structures. – We have a proprietary taxonomy covering European markets.
Specific POV. No false balance.
Latency has a position on European private market data infrastructure and it's not neutral. Copy should reflect that. LLMs add hedges and balance by default ("while there are different perspectives", "it's important to consider"). Those hedges kill the authority signal.
Write with a point of view. Professional slang from the audience's vocabulary ("origination," "bolt-on," "IC memo," "coverage gap") can and should appear without being explained. It signals that the writer knows the room.
Direct entry and exit
Content starts with the first word of the point. No preamble ("In this piece we'll explore..."), no scene-setting sentence that could be cut without losing anything.
The same applies to endings. The last sentence is the last thought. No "I hope this is useful," no "To summarise what we've covered," no call-to-action tacked on to a piece that wasn't written as a CTA. If the piece needs a CTA, it's the last line because the argument earned it.
LLM instruction string — Human voice mechanics
Paste this at the start of any AI-assisted content brief to enforce all six rules.
Before generating any content under this brand, read the six
Human Voice Mechanics rules. Run every output through them.
A piece that fails Rule 1 (metronome rhythm), Rule 2 (em-dashes
or transition openers), or Rule 3 (forbidden words) must be
revised before delivery. No exceptions for any content type.
Vary sentence length radically. No em-dashes. No transition
openers (Furthermore, Moreover, Additionally, It's worth noting
that). No structural symmetry in lists. Start with the point.
End with the last thought.3 — Web elements
Writing for the interface
Headings
The heading is the claim. Not the topic, not the category, not the label. "Market intelligence for European private markets" is a label. "The 70% of European companies PitchBook doesn't index" is a claim. Lead with the claim.
Heading hierarchy must be logical for screen readers. Never skip levels for visual effect.
Links
Link text must describe the destination. "Learn more" is not acceptable. "See how entity resolution works" is. The test: if you removed the surrounding sentence, would the link text still tell you where you're going?
Never use "click here." It describes the action, not the destination.
Buttons & CTAs
Button text is a verb plus, optionally, the object of that action: "Start analysis." "Run query." "Export report." Never "Submit." Never "Click here." Never "Learn more" on a button.
Lists
Bullet lists: items are genuinely parallel and unordered. Numbered lists: sequence matters. Two items or fewer: use prose. Don't use a list to break up information that would read naturally as a sentence or two.
Empty states
Empty states are an onboarding moment, not a failure state. Orient the user to what they're about to be able to do.
"No companies yet. Start a market scan to build your first target list."
Not: "No results found."
Tooltips
Maximum 60 characters. Explains the non-obvious, not the obvious. Answers: what is this field, what does this value mean, why does this number differ from the registry data.
Not "Click to see more."
Forms
Field labels: sentence case, outside the field, not as placeholder text. Placeholder text disappears when the user starts typing and cannot serve as the label. Mark required fields; not optional ones — "Required" or an asterisk with a legend at the form level.
Error messages: [what happened] + [how to fix it]. "Invalid email" + "Enter a valid email address." Two sentences maximum. Error messages must be programmatically associated with their field, not just visually adjacent.
Helper text (below the field): use for constraints the user needs before attempting to fill the field, not after. Privacy forms: be explicit about what data is collected and why. No passive-voice disclaimers.
Alt text
Alt text is for content, not decoration. Ask: what would you tell someone over the phone if they asked what's in this image? If the image is purely decorative, use an empty alt attribute (alt="").
Alt text must never be the sole means of conveying information that is critical to understanding the page. If an image contains data or a key claim, that content must also appear in body text. Alt text is the fallback, not the primary vehicle.
4 — Content types
Specifications by channel
Each channel has a distinct purpose, structure, and tone calibration. Writing the same way across all of them is a failure of positioning, not a stylistic choice.
Web — vertical & use case pages
Convert a specific job title with a specific problem
Each page answers one question: "Is this for me?" Authoritative leads. The reader is evaluating whether the problem description is accurate.
Length
350–600 words of body copy. Long enough to establish credibility, short enough to reach the CTA before the reader has time to leave.
Don't
Open with Latency's capabilities. Use "comprehensive" to describe data coverage. Write the same page for all verticals with the nouns swapped.
Promotional deck
Works without narration
Every slide has one headline claim. The claim lives in the title bar. A reader who only reads the title of every slide should be able to reconstruct the full argument.
Slide copy rule
If the title is a label ("Our Data Coverage"), change it to a claim ("Coverage where your current stack has gaps").
Don't
Put the founding story before the problem. Use full paragraphs in slides sent as PDF. Include a "vision" slide in a sales deck.
Build category authority
Short, provocative, no preamble. Sentence fragments are fine. Starting with a number is fine. The goal: be the account people in European private markets follow because it consistently says something worth reading.
Cadence
3–5 posts per week. Quality over frequency. One mediocre post damages the authority signal more than three days of silence.
Don't
Post thought leadership with no Latency-specific angle. Use hashtags more than two per post. Start with a question that answers itself.
Email marketing — cold outreach
Cold: 80–120 words. Full stop.
Subject lines: specific, not clever. A number or a named claim outperforms a question or a teaser. This audience does not read long cold emails.
Subject line examples
The 70% of European mid-market PE that's not in your current stack
80% of your TAM isn't on Apollo
Never
Start with "I hope this finds you well." Use "I wanted to reach out because..." Include more than one CTA. Send a cold email longer than 150 words.
Email newsletter — market digest
Maintain authority between purchase moments
Purpose: keep warm prospects and customers engaged between sales touchpoints. Each issue must deliver something a reader in European private markets couldn't get elsewhere — a data point, a market observation, or a workflow insight from the platform.
Structure
One hook (the insight or data point), one expansion (why it matters to the reader's workflow), one optional CTA. The hook must stand alone as a LinkedIn post. If it doesn't, the issue isn't ready.
Don't
Summarise industry news already available elsewhere. Lead with Latency product updates unless the update solves a specific reader problem. Use the newsletter as a sales channel — it's an authority channel.
Press release
Inform, not persuade
Press releases follow inverted pyramid structure: the most important information first. The first paragraph must answer who, what, when, where, and why. Journalists will cut from the bottom. Write so that cutting doesn't break the story.
Tone
Neutral and factual. The brand voice applies to quotes only — all Latency spokesperson quotes must be in voice. The surrounding copy should be clean, newswire-style prose: no adjectives that aren't facts, no superlatives.
Boilerplate
Use the approved 200-word boilerplate from S2 Messaging, unchanged. Legal entity: Blue-Boost, S.L.
Legal & compliance copy
Plain language with legal precision
Legal copy must be drafted or reviewed by legal counsel. Brand guidelines govern presentation, not legal substance. Where brand voice conflicts with legal requirements, legal requirements win.
Presentation rules
No contractions. No sentence fragments. Active voice where legally possible. Plain language: if a sentence requires reading twice to parse, it needs rewriting. Avoid legalese where plain equivalents exist ("use" not "utilise," "end" not "terminate").
Copyright notice format
© [Year] Latency. All rights reserved.
5 — Accessibility & inclusive language
WCAG AA compliance is the floor
Latency targets WCAG AA compliance. The rules in this section are the minimum standard, not the ceiling.
Writing for people
Gender
"They" is the correct singular gender-neutral pronoun. "The analyst... they" not "he or she." Rewrite to avoid the pronoun when possible ("analysts who..." not "the analyst who...").
Ability
Avoid idioms that use disability as metaphor. "The data is missing" not "the data is blind to." "Unavailable" not "lame." "Understand" not "see" when vision is the implied mechanism.
Geography
Write for a European professional, not a British or US one by default. "The City" is not a universal reference. "Mid-market" means different things in different markets. Define it when precision matters.
Technical accessibility
Reading level
Target Flesch-Kincaid reading level 10–12 for marketing copy. The subject matter is complex; the sentences don't have to be. Average sentence length 18–22 words in body copy, with variation.
Heading hierarchy
Use headings in sequence. H1 before H2, H2 before H3. Never skip a level for visual effect. Screen readers use heading structure to navigate the page.
Animation & motion
Any animation that lasts more than three seconds or repeats must have a pause control, or must be suppressible via the OS-level "reduce motion" preference. No auto-playing video with sound.
Links
Links must be distinguishable from surrounding text by more than colour alone. Underline on hover at minimum; underline by default preferred for body copy links.
6 — Word list
Canonical terms & brand vocabulary
The left column shows the term a writer might reach for. The right column shows what goes in the document. Consistency here is a trust signal — every deviation makes the platform sound like it was written by a different company.
Canonical terms — always use these forms
Brand vocabulary — protected terms
These terms are capitalized exactly as shown. No deviations. Verify against the live platform UI before use in product documentation.
The full approved and forbidden vocabulary lists are in S2 Voice & Tone → Vocabulary section.
7 — Generative media prompting
Visual brief language for AI image tools
For anyone at Latency creating visual assets using AI image generation tools — LinkedIn, marketing materials, pitch decks, moodboards, website imagery. These prompts define the visual brief language that keeps AI-generated imagery consistent with the brand.
Brand prompt persona
Prompts for Latency imagery should read like a data analyst's visual brief: specific, precise, and stripped of decorative language. The imagery is authoritative without being cold. Every image should look like it was made with judgement, not generated at random.
Always include in prompts
Always exclude from prompts
Prompt structure convention
Lead with subject and context → lighting specification → mood descriptor → technical quality note. Keep prompts under 65 words unless the composition requires precise specificity. Do not open with "generate," "create," or "imagine." Start with the subject.
Sample prompts
LinkedIn header or campaign visual
An analyst in a modern European financial district office at midday, focused on two screens showing data visualisations of company ownership structures. Clean overhead natural light, no direct eye contact with camera. Minimal colour palette: dark navy, white, cool grey. Photorealistic, editorial style. The composition suggests concentrated intelligence at work, not performance. No text in image.
Website hero — PE deal sourcing vertical
Wide shot of a glass-walled meeting room in a London or Frankfurt financial district building. Two people reviewing printed research materials and a laptop screen showing a data dashboard. Late morning natural light through floor-to-ceiling windows. Clean, minimal interior. No visible branding. Cool neutral tones. The image conveys analytical rigour, not urgency. No text. No posed eye contact with camera.
LinkedIn post visual — data insight
Close-up of a laptop screen showing a clean data visualisation with European company names and financial metrics. The screen is in sharp focus; the background is a blurred modern office interior. Cool neutral light. No people in frame. The data on screen should be plausible but fictional. No real company names. No text overlay. Ideogram: output as 1200×628px for LinkedIn.