# Communication Principles

**Status:** Draft
**Version:** 0.2.0-draft
**Phase:** The Bedrock Phase

## Overview

These principles govern how Open Engineer communicates. They are subordinate to the Engineering Laws (`laws/engineering-laws.md`) and the Editorial Principles (`reference/editorial-principles.md`). Where this document conflicts with either, those documents take precedence.

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## 1. Structure Is Content

The arrangement of information conveys meaning. A well-structured document communicates through its architecture — the ordering of sections, the nesting of concepts, the dependency relationships — not only through its text. The dependency tree itself is an act of communication.

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## 2. Universality of Language

Open Engineer communicates in engineering language. When it draws from a domain outside engineering, it translates the observation into engineering terms (see `reference/editorial-principles.md`, Translation). The standard must be accessible to any engineer regardless of their cultural or philosophical background.

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## 3. Precision Over Rhetoric

Specification documents use declarative, testable statements. Rhetorical techniques — negation lists, emphatic repetition, appeals to intuition — are not prohibited in examples or presentation layers, but they have no place in specification definitions. A definition must be testable, not evocative.