# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 11 ("Categories") — Post-Line-Edit Verification (Round 3)

Stance: cold re-read, skeptical professional editor. Inputs verified: current chapter text, round-2 Dialogue Doctor audit (`OVERALL: CLEAN`), Plain Translation audit (`DRIFT-FOUND — 3 orders` + 1 continuity order), Codex Plain Translation repair memo (4 accepted orders + thumb-density motif repair), voice cards, reading guide + `reading_guide_bans.tsv`, mechanical gate report (chapter 11: open=0, allowlisted=0, WATCH=51 — matches the memo's post-repair run; the round-2 audit's WATCH=52 reflects the pre-edit state). Scope per orchestrator: verify the four final Plain Translation line edits, then re-run the zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis sweep and the fake-sharp sweep across the whole current chapter, not only changed lines.

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## EDIT-BY-EDIT VERIFICATION

**EDIT 1 — Ruth's benefits-form line: FIXED, no second sharp line created.** Line 59 now reads: "We didn't have those documents, and I wasn't going to fake them for HR. I withdrew the form." The "build a paper household for HR" figure is gone; the replacement is plain refusal plus plain action, default-contracted, in Ruth's "calm, exact" register. I hunted for a smuggled substitute figure inside the same speech: "Naming Sam set off an affidavit" is the strongest candidate and it survives — "set off" is a factual description of a bureaucratic trigger, followed immediately by the literal document list (notarized letter, joint account statements, shared lease or two utility bills); it is denotative, not an editorial metaphor. The sympathy-email-with-flower close is situation comedy, already ruled non-editorial by the Plain Translation audit. Full recount of editorial-sharp Ruth lines this appearance: "I'm saying the other version has its own waiting room." (line 67, with its "other box cost me a year of wedding questions" setup, ruled one turn in round 1) — count: **one**. "Abbreviate" (line 39) is form economy, "You should be" / "It did" are plain assent, "That was my answer for about twenty years" (line 135) is plain confession, the PARK question is a practical question. Cap of one per appearance (voice card: "one sharp editorial line per appearance maximum"): met.

**EDIT 2 — Priya's rent number: FIXED, not expository correction.** Ben, line 85: "The difference is six hundred forty a month, which is in the spreadsheet." Priya, line 103: "I'm saying I don't want to sign a shared lease because six hundred forty a month makes being scared look responsible." The numbers now agree exactly; the cast's most precise speaker no longer misquotes the spreadsheet. Crucially, the reuse does not read as correction or exposition: Priya is not informing anyone of the figure or fixing Ben's math — she takes his own number and turns it against its persuasive force, which is argument, not data delivery, and the line still lands on her direct want ("I want to sign it on a day I'd sign it anyway"), the plain-speech floor sentence that earns the sharper clause before it. Echo check on the repeated token: two uses, second transformative (spreadsheet fact → motive diagnosis of the fact), consistent with how the chapter handles "box" and "waiting room."

**EDIT 3 — Ben's confessional cap: FIXED, no new fake-sharp punchline.** Sam, line 57: "That's the whole story." Ben, line 105: "That's the email, honestly. The rest is formatting." The grep confirms exactly one "That's the whole ___" remains in the chapter; the template echo is broken. Is the replacement a new zinger? Tested against the cut-list: it arrives *after* Ben's unguarded fear sentence ("And I'm scared we lose it… a spreadsheet about an apartment other people live in"), not instead of it, so it is not a zinger displacing a moment of fear; "formatting" is Ben's documented register (forms, routes, spreadsheets — card: "self-deprecating logistical jokes"); the line rates his own email document, not anyone's speech; and it is speakable — "honestly" is a spoken hedge, not a written flourish. It also adds no fifth two-beat correction cap: it is a self-deflating tag inside Ben's own turn, not a volley. The chapter's cap count holds at four (Dom's dollar, Ben's tabs, June's cargo exit, Priya's label), at but not over the round-1 ceiling.

**EDIT 4 — No-thumb and residual line edits: CLEAN.** The grep for `thumb` returns zero hits — both beats the memo cut (the opening and Sam's stool beat) are gone, and the replacements introduce no speech commentary: line 61 is now "Sam rubbed the edge of the stool. 'I am still angry about the chair.'" — Sam still owns objects and space (stool moved, stool dragged back, shoulder against pegboard, key ring), so the round-2 convergence clearance does not depend on the deleted thumb. The reworked opening sentence — "Whoever had toned the regilding had matched the worn gold instead of the bright: a repair, not a disguise." — executes the aphorism-gate order (appositive bound to this frame's toning; the colon instead of the ordered em-dash changes nothing about detachability) and is narration about gilding craft, outside dialogue scope; "toned/toning" is the only diagnosis-vocabulary lookalike in the chapter and it is a literal gilding verb. The full-form "I am still angry" is Rule 4 deliberate emphasis (year-old anger stated flatly); the gate logs it WATCH only. The `load-bearing` ban: zero hits, all scopes.

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## FULL-CHAPTER RE-SWEEPS

SCENE 01 (manifest scene 01, Aiello Frame & Glass → street door of Marchetti Rooms → empty studio; speakers June, Dom, Ruth, Sam, Ben, Priya):

- **1. Voice convergence: CLEAN** — covered attributions across the form volley, the gallbladder story, and the lease argument; each speaker stays assignable. Strongest counter-candidate: Priya's "six hundred forty a month makes being scared look responsible" against Ruth's "the other version has its own waiting room" — two precise women being sharp in one chapter. They survive as distinct: Priya's sharpness is clinical-causal (a managed variable misbehaving, per her discharge-planning register) and resolves into a stated want; Ruth's is editorial-symmetric and resolves into withheld advice ("I'm not telling either of you what to sign"). Ben's nervous word-count, Sam's room-and-tenancy idiom, Dom's transactional economy, and June's deflecting tags are not mutually confusable anywhere.
- **2. Monotone Q/A rhythm: CLEAN** — the one rapid Q/A run ("Same address, if there's a claim?" / "No." / "Then whose number?" / "Mine." / "Both.") is literal form-filling, with the volley broken by Sam's interjection and Ruth writing; the lease argument alternates case-making, joke, question, and interiority beats at varied lengths. Strongest counter-candidate: the Ben/Priya reminder exchange (lines 107–111), three short turns of similar weight — survives as couple-shorthand de-escalation closing a fight that isn't happening in public, not a volley pattern.
- **3. Missing interiority: CLEAN** — June's mind surfaces at lines 23 (efficiency self-deception), 51, 69 (mixed gray), 81 (forty times rent / mid-December), 99 (occupant), 113–115, and carries the studio close solo. The longest dialogue stretch without her (lines 83–97, ~230 words) remains bracketed on both sides, as cleared in round 2; the final edits removed nothing from any beat.
- **4. Questions-as-statements: CLEAN** — strongest counter-candidate: Ben's "Can I read an email out loud in a store. Is that allowed." — punctuated flat but genuinely asked and genuinely answered ("People do worse"); nervous-Ben syntax, not manufactured portent. Ruth's PARK question remains a real question June really dodges.
- **5. Fake-McCarthy minimalism: CLEAN** — the clipped runs (form volley, "Two trips." / "Because glass.", "Tuesday." / "Tuesday, June") are transactional or parting speech earning their brevity; attribution is never stripped for starkness. Counter-candidate: "Quiet cost us six hours." / "It did." — two bare lines, but anchored to testimony given thirty lines up and attributed by content.
- **6. Jargon-trading without translation: CLEAN** — "occupant" is translated twice (Sam's hallway consequence, June's groceries-up-four-flights weighing); "forty times rent, or a guarantor at eighty" arrives as quoted email and is weighed by June's interiority; "the rider" is glossed by Dom's own "Insurance wants the second line filled." Nothing trades unweighable.
- **7. Attribution opacity: CLEAN** — the unattributed "Quiet cost us six hours" resolves to Sam via the six hours; "Both," Sam said is tagged; the cargo volley alternates two clearly distinct registers. No line orphaned.
- **DIALOGUE DIAGNOSIS (zero tolerance): CLEAN** — re-swept every spoken line and every line of narration about speech; the vocabulary grep (rehearsed, careful, lawyerly, measured, cadence, rhythm, phrasing, wording, delivery, "the way she/he/they") returns zero hits. Strongest counter-candidate: "Forty times rent had a clean arithmetic sound. Mid-December did not." (line 81, June's interiority) — survives: it characterizes a published lease criterion Ben read off an email, not Ben's phrasing or delivery; the same content-not-speech class as "Occupant was an ugly word for a person carrying groceries up four flights" (line 99), which characterizes the bureaucratic category, and as "It's a good label" (line 111), which rates the reminder artifact. Also re-checked: "Abbreviate" (instruction about a box on a form), "The rest is formatting" (rates his own document), "she'd meant her answer as a dodge, and Ruth had matched it with twenty years of her own" (line 149 — self-intent plus content, the deflection-made-visible §2 requires; Ruth's "That was my answer" claims the dodge's content, never its delivery). No instance found, spoken or narrated.
- **FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN** — every exchange run against the cut-list. Strongest counter-candidate after the edits: Ben's "I have a long boring history. It's my best quality." (line 93) — quotable-shaped, but it survives: it is speakable self-mockery doing argumentative work (explaining the broker's one-strong-application logic), in the card's documented register, and it precedes rather than replaces his plain fear line twelve lines later. Re-confirmed survivors, unchanged by the edits: Ruth's waiting-room turn (the sanctioned single sharp line, anchored to Sam's literal waiting room); June's north-light answer (solicited — "One true thing about it" — and self-detonated: "That's not a vote. I'm cargo."); Priya's scared-look-responsible clause (now with the correct number, still followed by the direct want); Dom's "principle of the dollar" (situational, paid off by "revised her opinion of the dollar"); the cargo volley (ownership changes each turn, inside the 60%-banter calibration); "the occupant negotiates from the hallway" (tenancy fact in Sam's spatial idiom). Narration candidates: "a repair, not a disguise" is now bound to the toning fact per the executed order and no longer free-standing; "where the application window went on closing whether anyone applied or not" stands as round-2 left it — holds, with the standing instruction not to let the construction recur.
- **INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN** — both directions. The focalizer is present (see mode 3) and none of her beats explains the exchange twice: line 69 has the judgment (mixed gray) without restating either side's case; line 81 carries her own clock without glossing Ben's; line 99 reacts to the word, not the argument. The studio close narrates her relation to the question, not a summary of the scene the reader just had.

Plain-speech floor spot-check on the principals (since the edits touched three of them): Ruth — "We didn't have those documents, and I wasn't going to fake them for HR."; Priya — "I want to sign it on a day I'd sign it anyway."; Ben — "And I'm scared we lose it."; Sam — "I was forty feet from the desk."; June — "I've carried glass through this neighborhood." All direct, all followable as text. Voice-card contraction policies hold throughout; the chapter's two full-form moments (Sam's "I am still angry," Ruth's careful distinctions) are card-licensed emphasis, gate-logged WATCH only.

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REVISION ORDERS: none.

OVERALL: CLEAN
