diff --git a/docs/changes/unreleased/974-held-out-floor-british-english.md b/docs/changes/unreleased/974-held-out-floor-british-english.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..09d40d76f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/changes/unreleased/974-held-out-floor-british-english.md
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+---
+kind: fixed
+title: A rule about how it writes lives with the rules about how it codes
+pr: 974
+surface: [chat, docs]
+invalidates:
+  - "`I want it to always write in british english` reached `standing orders` only at fourth place, on body text alone, and #933's rewrite of `questions.md` took that fourth place away — `TestHeldOutQuestionsReachTheirPage` scored 16 of 22 against its floor of 17 on `dev` `23f5da1eb` ITSELF, so the light gate, the touched packages and `check` were red on every open pull request for a reason none of them caused. The asker's own sentence is on `standing-orders.md`'s `Always do it this way` heading and prose now, and the question reaches its page FIRST rather than fourth."
+  - "`Always do it this way` read as a section about coding style alone — `We use tabs here`, `Prefer small commits`. It holds rules about how aforge WRITES too: spelling, language and tone are the same kind of standing order as a convention about code, they never fire, and they ride into the work the same way."
+---
+
+A held-out question that passes at rank four is not really passing: it is sitting
+on the margin of some other page's silence, and any page that later learns to
+speak takes the slot. That is what happened here, and it is why the fix is on the
+page that deserved the question rather than on the page that beat it — the asker
+really is asking about standing orders, and the test says in so many words to fix
+the scoring rather than the questions. The words go into an EXISTING `## `
+heading, because a new heading hijacks the scoring and breaks unrelated probes.
+
+Found by lane R while gating its own pull request, and independently reproduced
+by lanes A, F, T and P before it was written.
diff --git a/internal/manual/chat/standing-orders.md b/internal/manual/chat/standing-orders.md
index f41a438341..15bd3887e8 100644
--- a/internal/manual/chat/standing-orders.md
+++ b/internal/manual/chat/standing-orders.md
@@ -71,14 +71,16 @@ line** instead of guessing. It applies your sentence to the work in front of it
 says something like *if you want this to hold for future work here too, say so and I'll
 set it standing*. A card you did not ask for is worse than a question.
 
-## Always do it this way — coding style rules, conventions and preferences
+## Always do it this way — coding style rules, conventions, preferences, and always write it like this
 
-*Always do it this way. A coding style rule. Our conventions. My preferences.*
+*Always do it this way. A coding style rule. Our conventions. My preferences. I want it
+to always write in british english.*
 
 "Always run the tests before you tell me it works." "Never touch the public API in this
-repo." "We use tabs here." "Prefer small commits." None of these has a time in it, and
-none of them is waiting for anything to happen. They are simply true, and they stay
-true.
+repo." "We use tabs here." "Prefer small commits." "I want it to always write in british
+english." None of these has a time in it, and none of them is waiting for anything to
+happen. They are simply true, and they stay true — and the last one is a rule about how
+it writes, which is the same kind of thing as a rule about how it codes.
 
 aforge keeps that kind as a standing order that **holds**. It never fires, it is never
 checked, and it costs nothing. What it does instead is ride into the world of the work