Writing
Write the sentence you want quoted
A sentence worth quoting names the company, states a checkable fact, and still makes sense if the rest of the page is cut.
By Found. Updated 22 September 2026.
Answer products do not quote your brand voice. They quote a unit of text that still means something alone. If the sentence needs the slogan above it, it will not survive the trip. Write the line you would accept seeing next to your name in someone else's paragraph.
The lift test
Copy one sentence onto a blank note, under the question a buyer asks. Read it with no surrounding page. If it still answers, keep it. If it only sounds like a continuation, rewrite it or cut it.
Harborline is a fictional warehouse-software company used in these notes. This sentence fails the lift test because it names nothing a buyer can check.
Do not publish
With our platform, customers unlock operational excellence across the supply chain with cutting-edge solutions.
This one holds: Harborline is warehouse software for a single site with 50 to 500 employees. It does not sell route planning. A typical implementation is six weeks, and the starting price on the pricing page is $2,400 a month.
The second version is not pretty. It names a refusal, a customer, and a number a reader can go and check. Style can return after the fact is in the sentence. It rarely works if you start with style and hope a fact shows up later.
What to put in the first paragraph
You will not fit every item into one line. Fit them into the first paragraph of any page you hope will be cited. Later sections can explain. The opening has to stand up on its own.
- The company name. Not "we," and not "our platform."
- The category in words a buyer uses, not an internal nickname.
- The customer: a headcount, an industry, or a job title. One is enough.
- A number you can defend: a price, a time, a count, or a dated figure.
- A boundary: who it is not for, or what you do not do.
Lists, dates, and prices are not decoration
Found's citability pillar is 14 of the 100 points in Found Score v1.0. It looks for dull artifacts: a link to docs or resources, a pricing link, a date, at least 400 words, and at least three lists. That is a scoring choice we published. It is not proof that every model keeps the same list. We picked those signals because a person can quote them without booking a call.
A date does a quiet job. "Updated 22 September 2026" says somebody looked at the page this year. An undated page can still be true. It is easier to treat as leftover.
A public price does a louder job. "Contact us for a quote" is honest when the work is custom. It is also how a page ducks the question the buyer asked. If you cannot print a single price, print the reason and a range. "Projects start at $18,000. The figure moves with the number of sites." That can be quoted. "Flexible commercial terms" cannot.
Headings that match the buyer's question
"The Harborline difference" gives an answer no handle. "What does Harborline cost?" gives it a handle and tells you what the next paragraph is for. Answer in the first two sentences under that heading. Do not warm up with a history of warehousing.
Three headings are enough on a commercial page. Eight headings that repeat one claim are how a page gets long without getting specific. Which pages deserve those headings is the subject of Five pages to publish before you start a blog.
An editing pass you can finish in one sitting
- Read the first paragraph with your name swapped for a real rival. If nothing becomes false, rewrite it. The full version of that test is If you can delete your name, do not publish the page.
- Underline every number. If you cannot open a page that supports it, delete the number.
- Turn the nearest feature dump into a list of three items. Each item needs a fact, not an adjective.
- Add the date you revised the page.
- Cut the sentence that repeats your tagline in different clothes.
If the first paragraph cannot survive that pass, the homepage layout is not the problem yet. Rewrite the sentences before you redraw the page.