Black Box Notes

On opacity, auditability, and the limits of trust in modern AI systems.

Style

Style Guide

The publication's stylebook. Internal reference for contributors and visible reference for external citers. When the publication's prose disagrees with this guide, the prose is wrong; flag it to the editor.

1. Voice

The publication's voice is austere on purpose. The reader is presumed to be a working professional — an auditor, a researcher, a policy analyst, an engineer, a counsel — who does not need an idea sold to them. Prose that "feels exciting" should be cut. Prose that explains itself twice should be cut to once. Adjectives serving as evidence should be replaced with the evidence.

The voice is not unkind. It is precise. When the precise word is also the unflattering word, we use the precise word.

2. The publication name

  • First reference: Black Box Notes, full, no abbreviation, italicised when used as a published title in running prose.
  • Subsequent reference in running prose: the publication. We do not use "BBN".
  • In bylines and standing pages: Black Box Notes. Not italicised.
  • In the verbatim disclosure paragraph: not italicised. The disclosure is the law speaking, not the publication speaking.

3. Capitalisation

  • "Black box" as a phrase. Lowercase, no hyphen. "A black box system." "Whether the system is a black box." Only capitalised when part of the publication's name.
  • Departments. Title-case: Notes, Field Reports, Regulation Watch, Conversations, Corrections, Cornerstone.
  • Regulatory bodies. First-reference full name and acronym in parentheses: the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Subsequent reference acronym.
  • Acts of legislation. Title-case, italicised on first reference: EU AI Act, UK AI Bill. Subsequent reference roman.
  • Standards. Capitals as the standards body sets them: ISO/IEC 42001, NIST AI RMF.
  • Roles. Lowercase when generic ("the chief executive"), title-case when titular before a name ("Chief Executive Pat Walker").

4. Technical terms

  • Agentic. Lowercase. Hyphenate when compounded: "agentic-system audit," "agentic operating system."
  • Interpretability. Lowercase, no hyphen.
  • Auditability. Lowercase, no hyphen.
  • Transparency report. Lowercase. Capitalise only when it is a published document's title ("the 2025 Transparency Report").
  • Model providers. First reference name in full: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind. We do not nickname.
  • "AI." Acceptable. "Artificial intelligence" on first reference is not required.
  • "Foundation model" / "frontier model." Use the term the cited source uses, in quotes if the term itself is contested.

5. Citations

Footnotes and endnotes are not used in the running prose. Citations appear in-text, linked.

The publication's recommended citation format for piece-level citation (copy-paste citation button) is:

{Author} ({Year}). "{Title}." Black Box Notes. {URL}.

Example:

Vogel, A. (2026). "What 'Black Box AI' Actually Means in 2026." Black Box Notes. https://blackboxnotes.com/articles/01-what-black-box-ai-actually-means-in-2026/.

6. Dates and times

  • Article dates: ISO 8601 in metadata (2026-05-12), spelled in prose ("12 May 2026").
  • Datelines: city in small-caps at the head of a piece, ISO date next to it ("BERLIN — 12 May 2026").
  • Time zones: when relevant, UTC. Conversions to local follow in parentheses.
  • Decades: lowercase, with apostrophe ("the 2010s," "the late '90s").

7. Numbers

  • Spell zero through nine; numeral for ten and above.
  • Exception: any number with a unit ("$5M," "3ms," "12% accuracy improvement"). Numerals throughout.
  • Money: $ for U.S. dollars on first reference. USD if ambiguity is possible.
  • Large numbers: spell at first reference, numeral after ("five million users"; "5M users").
  • Percentages: numeral plus "%" without a space ("12%").

8. Quotations

  • Double quotes for spoken quotes. Single quotes inside double.
  • Block quotes for any spoken passage longer than 35 words; introduce with a colon.
  • Ellipsis with brackets for elision: "[...] the operator declined."
  • We do not edit a source's grammar inside quotes. We add [sic] only when the misuse is load-bearing.
  • We do not fabricate quotes. See Editorial guidelines §4.

9. Hyphens, en-dashes, em-dashes

  • Hyphens for compound modifiers ("agentic-system audit," "audit-grade transparency").
  • En-dashes for ranges ("2024–2026").
  • Em-dashes for parenthetical breaks, with spaces — like that.

10. Lists

  • Use ordered lists when sequence matters or when the reader will refer back to a numbered item.
  • Unordered lists for parallel items where sequence is unimportant.
  • Do not write a five-bullet list that could be a sentence.
  • Closing punctuation: period if the list items are full sentences, none otherwise.

11. Headings

  • Sentence case in headlines and subheads.
  • Subheads are real structural markers, not pull-quotes. A piece with three subheads should have three logical parts.
  • No headline puns. No headlines that bait the reader. No headlines whose meaning requires the lede.

12. People & organisations

  • First reference: full name. Subsequent reference: last name only.
  • Title precedes name on first reference, lowercase if not titular ("the chief executive Pat Walker").
  • Pronouns: we use a subject's stated pronouns. If unknown, the subject's name is repeated as needed; we do not assume.
  • Organisations: we use the legal name on first reference, the common short form after.

13. Linking

  • Link the first reference to a primary document, not its summary.
  • Do not link the entire sentence. Link the specific phrase the link concerns.
  • Do not link to a tweet as a source of a fact. If the tweet documents the fact, link to the tweet's screenshot in the Internet Archive.
  • Do not link to other publications in Lumenwhite Media Holdings' portfolio. We are independent of them; the link policy reflects that.

14. The Cornerstone column

Cornerstone pieces are the publication's definitional essays. They use a drop-cap on the first paragraph, set in EB Garamond at ~3.6rem. They run between 2500 and 4500 words. They appear under the Cornerstone kicker on the homepage and on a fixed shelf in the archive.

15. Critical-frame callouts

The publication has one piece of typography reserved for the "this is contested" function: the .callout.flag. It uses a red left border (#9a1d1d) and a slightly warmer background. Use it when (a) the publication wishes to mark a claim it will return to, or (b) a regulator or a court has formally contested the claim. Do not use it for emphasis. Do not use it for the publication's own opinions.

16. The dateline city list

The publication's standing dateline cities: Berlin, Mexico City, Lisbon, London, Brussels, Washington, Singapore, San Francisco, Tokyo. Add a city only when a piece is filed from that city and the contributor has been there. We do not write Berlin datelines from elsewhere.

17. Last word

This style guide is internal mechanics, not a manifesto. The mechanics serve the publication's job. The job is to write about opacity precisely enough to be useful to the working professional who reads us. If the mechanics ever get in the way of that, we revise the mechanics.

Last revised: 2026-05-22.