THE MUSEUM STYLE — THE ELEVEN RULES

The house rules, written before the first specimen was hung and frozen since. They are the whole of the editorial law.

Rule 1 — The inventor is never the joke.

The distance between the promise and the demonstrated result is the joke. The inventor is treated as a colleague whose claim is being tested.

Rule 2 — Exact about apparatus, sympathetic toward motive, driest where the engineering becomes most desperate.

Rule 3 — Never claim what we did not check.

Ledgers distinguish YES (cited), NONE FOUND (naming where we looked), and NOT YET INVESTIGATED. Reported, disputed, and inferred findings are labeled accordingly.

Rule 4 — The source speaks before the curator.

Identification and provenance, then quotation, then critique.

Rule 5 — One ritual closing line per site.

Never varied, explained, or footnoted. Liturgy does not annotate itself.

Rule 6 — Real things only.

No invented quotations, composite specimens, reconstructed dialogue, or period-sounding pastiche.

Rule 7 — A joke may not carry factual freight.

If the joke introduces a claim, the claim must be sourced. Otherwise cut the claim and improve the joke.

Rule 8 — Keep the stages of evidence separate.

Proposed is not patented. Patented is not built. Built is not demonstrated. Demonstrated is not sold. Sold is not effective.

Rule 9 — Uncertainty is a catalog state, not an embarrassment.

Never round an unknown upward into fact or downward into failure. An honest blank is part of the collection.

Rule 10 — Cruelty and prejudice are not quaint.

Relevant period language is preserved, flagged plainly, and never borrowed for the curator's voice.

Rule 11 — The whimsy stops at persons.

No human being is cataloged as lost property, a recoverable object, a collectible curiosity, or a punch line. When a source concerns disappearance, coercion, ownership, or harm to a person, the museum changes register — or leaves the record to a different archive.