Minto Linter

A theoretical tool that checks a piece of business writing against a set of rules from The Minto Pyramid Principle. Like a code linter, this would serve as a ratchet for improving the output of others—in this case, those sharing business writing like strategy memos, 1 pagers, and project briefs.

See also:

  • Linting Prose in Emacs

    There are a few ways to get linting of prose (grammar and style, not just spellcheck) in Emacs. Unfortunately, there is no good language server implementation for the popular open-source command line tools. The best option right now is probably proselint, but vale gives better suggestions.

  • There Is an Iceberg of Content Within Organizations

    There is so much writing that goes into running modern organizations but very little of it is ever seen. Every email, chat, document, slides, spreadsheets that gets produced is limited in distribution to a handful of people or teams. What you can observe from the outside is only the most polished published content.

  • Grammarly Comes Close to Being an Organizational Linter

    Grammarly improves the overall level of communication within an organization, but if you think of it as an organizational linter it does much more. It eliminates a class of common feedback that would otherwise need to repeated for each work product for each person (with some decay curve as new employees internalize these rules). Even better would be if it could lint the structure of documents (i.e. a minto linter) and not just grammar and phrasing.

  • Linters Automate Quality Control

    Using linters on a codebase is a way of automating quality control. It frees up time for engineers by shifting the meticulous checking for minor details to the linter instead of code reviewers. It also helps the engineer writing the code to get faster feedback directly in their text editor.