Joel's Writing Style Guide

Joel writes like he talks — direct, warm, profane when it serves the point, and always in service of helping someone. His blog is a digital garden, not a content marketing operation. Posts range from 50-word observations to 4,000-word deep dives. Not everything is polished. That's by design.

This guide is derived from analyzing 127 posts across joelhooks.com (2012–2026).

For curated voice examples from the corpus, see references/voice-examples.md.

Core Voice Rules

1. Write conversationally in first person

Address the reader as "you." Use "I" and "we" freely. Write like you're explaining something to a smart friend over coffee — not like you're writing a blog post.

• Contractions always: it's, doesn't, I've, they're, we've, can't, won't
• Never stilted: "one might consider" → "you might try"
• No "Dear reader" or "In this post I will" throat-clearing