Write impersonal with usted, keep a claims register, and check the voice on every build

Context and Problem Statement

Only AKRIBIS One’s two lines and the endorsement were settled. Everything else about how AKRIBIS sounds lives in one site’s files, and contradicts itself. akribis.info’s glossary sets the formal usted, while its own anti-brief and this site write voseo; counted over its source, akribis.info uses 71 voseo forms and 70 usted forms, so the reader is addressed two ways on the same site. sol-farma.com uses usted and akribis.one voseo. Claims drift the same way. akribis.info records AKRIMET’s credential as OAA Level I Recognition (RE-016) with ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation in progress. akiot.es’s instructions still call it “IRAM-ISO/IEC 17025 vigente”. akribis.one withdrew three claims at Quality’s request after they were published. How does AKRIBIS address its reader in each language, what is its register, what may it claim and on what evidence, and how is that enforced before a page is published?

Decision Drivers

Criteria 1 (trust of a regulated buyer: every claim traceable), 3 (register: a precise instruments maker), 7 (three languages) and 9 (generated and tested) of ADR-0009; ADR-0025 and ADR-0031 (the checker inside every build); ADR-0032 (the naming check this extends).

Considered Options

• Impersonal by default with usted, você and you when the reader must be addressed; the voice, the glossary and a claims register as data; the forbidden forms checked on every build
• Voseo throughout, as an Argentine company speaking in its own voice
• Tú throughout, as most international software brands write Spanish
• A written guide with no data and no check

Decision Outcome

Proposed: the first option. brand/voice.yaml holds the voice and is published as /voice.json; brand/standards.yaml holds what the checker refuses.

• Address. Impersonal by default: buttons as infinitives (“Solicitar cotización”, the form akribis.info already uses 185 times), the rest in the third person or the first person plural. When the reader must be addressed: usted in Spanish, você in Portuguese, you in English. AKRIBIS sells to regulated industry across Latin America and Spain. Voseo reads as local outside Argentina and tú as informal, while usted is the B2B norm in every market. The impersonal default means most text never has to choose.
• Languages. Río de la Plata Spanish is the source text. Portuguese is Brazilian and English is international with British spelling, as on the rest of the brand. Portuguese and English are adaptations that a native speaker writes or reviews with the glossary. Nothing machine-translated is published without that review.
• Register. Seven principles, each a rule a writer can follow: precision before effect; short sentences with one idea each; exact terms; one thing, one name; no urgency, superlatives or promises; numbers, dates and units through Intl and the SI; adaptation over translation.
• Claims. Only what can be verified with documentation is stated: AKRIBIS’s own (a certificate, a contract, a register, an audit) or the provider’s published information (the manufacturer’s datasheet, certificate or site) for what concerns its product. Every claim of scope, quantity, accreditation, legal status, performance or client has that source in the register (claims in voice.json), with a status (current, in-progress or unverified) and a date. A site states a claim as the register words it, and publishes nothing that is not registered. Recognition, accreditation and certification are different things: a page names the exact credential with its number and scope, never a higher one. Client names need written permission, and AKRIBIS never compares itself with competitors. The register starts with four entries: AKRIMET’s recognition (current), its traceability (current), its 17025 accreditation (in progress), and the “nine countries” of akribis.one (unverified, so unpublishable until a source is recorded).
• Calls to action and glossary. Eight canonical calls to action in the three languages, and sixteen glossary terms, each with the words it replaces (monitoreo, not monitorización; cotización, not presupuesto; área limpia, not sala blanca). Names, standards and technical acronyms are never translated.
• The endorsement and One’s lines in English and Portuguese stay as the register proposes them: “A unit of AKRIBIS One”, “Uma unidade da AKRIBIS One”.
• The check. Two rules join the checker. voice lists, per language, the voseo and tú forms and the inflated phrases (“revolucionar”, “de clase mundial”, “next level”, “seamless”…), matched as whole words in the page’s language. claims lists the wordings that state more than the credential in force (“17025 vigente”, “laboratorio acreditado”, “accredited laboratory”…). Both read the visible text of every page and fail the build on a match. Text that quotes a wrong form as an example carries data-naming="quoted". The checker now separates neighbouring elements’ text, so words from adjacent elements no longer run together and slip past it. This site’s own Spanish used voseo in two places, and both are rewritten.

Consequences

• Good, because the reader is addressed one way across eleven sites, and a page cannot say “acreditado” about a laboratory that is recognised.
• Good, because a claim becomes a record with an owner and a date, as the regulated buyer expects of a calibration certificate.
• Bad, because akribis.info’s voseo, half of its Spanish address, is rewritten when it is rebuilt. Its CTAs are already infinitives, so most pages change little.
• The word lists catch the common forms, not all of them; a native review still reads every page.
• Open: Quality confirms every register entry against its document; the missing claims are recorded; whether Spain needs its own adaptation; akribis.info’s “Expertise” exception.

Confirmed by Demian Montes de Oca on 2026-10-06: the address (usted, impersonal by default) and the claims rule (for now, only what documentation or the provider’s information verifies). The record stays proposed for the rest (principles, glossary, calls to action) until it is ratified.