# Report rules1. Start with the reader's question. `my/report-settings.md` says who reads the report; the first three numbers answer what they ask every month.2. One idea per paragraph; one number per sentence where possible.3. A number comes with context: against the previous period, against the average, as a share.4. Say what happened and where. Not why. "Sales fell 12% in the North region in the last week of the month" is a finding; "because of the holidays" is a guess.5. An anomaly is not an error. Report it in numbers and name the check that would settle it.6. The same template every period, the same breakdowns, the same order. Reports are read side by side.7. Data notes are not optional: what was missing, what was excluded, which copy of the data was used.8. "How this was counted" is part of the report, not an appendix. The reader should be able to redo the headline number in five minutes.9. End with "What to ask the data owner" when something in the data needs a human answer.10. Short beats complete. Two pages at most; the table itself is in `data/` for anyone who wants more.