Writing conventions for dialectical-sample (dialectical/evidential contract, condensed)

Condensed from the proven contract in the sibling epistack-casebooks repo (kb/lhc/notes/COLLECTION.md) — full version there; this is illustrative, not the canonical spec.

Goal

Map a live, sourced disagreement — who asserts what, on what basis — without adjudicating who is right. Quality bar: does this note faithfully represent the state of contestation? Not: is this claim true, or do I believe it?

Title convention

Topical, never a verdict in the collection's own voice: "Whether the LHC could produce a dangerous micro black hole," not "The LHC cannot produce a dangerous micro black hole."

Attribution (mandatory)

Every proposition needs:

  1. An attributed asserter — who holds this position (a name, institution, or paper), kept separate from any judgment about correctness.
  2. A source-span citation — file link + a prose locator (section/heading) + a grounding-layer marker: verbatim (quoted), paraphrase layer (source's own summary, not quoted), or second-hand (another party's restatement).

Links from a proposition to the local immutable excerpts use evidenced-by: source proposition evidenced-by target excerpt. Each citation still requires the locator and grounding-layer marker above. The inverse is-evidence-for edge is not authored into immutable excerpts, and no reciprocal edge is implied.

Review

  • Title states no verdict in this collection's voice.
  • Every substantive claim names its asserter — including synthesis sentences; a nearby citation doesn't count as attribution for a sentence that itself evaluates ("narrows but does not close").
  • Every citation carries a prose locator and grounding-layer marker.
  • Competing positions get comparable interpretive care — not equal word count, but no side padded with weaker-grade material to look stronger.

Maintenance

Stale when attribution drifts from what a party now asserts, or a new sourced position emerges — never because a maintainer's own view changed or one side "lost."

Sources

sources/ holds short captured excerpts, treated as immutable once written — no elaborate ingest contract here; this is a demonstration, not a production casebook.

Types

Plain note type. No schema — attribution and citation are convention, enforced by this file, not frontmatter.