How-to communicate with intent

Owned by Robert Raposa
Aug 18, 2022
1 min read

If you’ve seen Slack message or discussion or review comments prefixed with a printent, like “[inform]”, learn a bit more about how to use them here.

History and Overview

The term printent was coined by @Nimisha Asthagiri.

Start by reading Tip: How-to Provide Review Comments on Docs.

See additional examples in the Arch Hour Google Doc.

Additional thoughts

  • Don’t worry about the perfect list of accepted printents. Experiment with your team and use the ones that work best.

  • Use printents in any short communications, including Slack. Some popular ones used there include:

    • [inform], [question], [request], [proposal]

  • Using a printent is very helpful to the author. It helps you clarify your intent to yourself, and then craft a message that matches your intent.

  • The original how-to for commenting on docs includes some printents that require some familiarity by the reader, including the context. For example, the “Questions seeking response” section. You may want to start with and/or stick with printents that would be globally understandable.