Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
A video script is four decisions, not a document: what the first line promises, how long the middle is allowed to be, what you actually say, and what has to be on screen while you say it.
A zero-width space occupies a position and draws nothing. Inside a hashtag it makes the tag a different string, so the tag looks perfect and reaches nobody.
The first line, before anything else. Every other placement is a judgement call, and two of them have been ruled against — the hashtag block and anything below the fold.
No platform publishes an emoji limit, so any number quoted at you is invented. Three things about emoji are measurable, and they are what should decide the count.
Almost every disclosure that draws a regulator's attention has perfectly good wording. What it does not have is placement. Here is what to say, and where it has to sit.
Length is rarely what stops a crosspost. It is the tenth image, the eleventh hashtag, and a link that is dead text on two networks — and none of them raise an error.
Zero-width spaces, byte-order marks, non-breaking spaces and substituted quotes travel with copied text. Here is what each one is, where it comes from, and what it breaks.
Instagram line breaks collapse because the composer strips trailing whitespace. Put a printable-but-blank character on each empty line and the paragraphs survive.
Numbering tells a reader how much is left, which keeps them reading. It also costs characters on every post, and the style with the total in it cannot be written until you have finished.
The cap and the useful number are different things, and the gap is large. Instagram allows thirty and recommends three to five. Here is every platform's cap and its sensible count.
Most hashtag mistakes cost you one tag. Three of them cost you every tag on the post, and none of the three announce themselves.
Receiving something free is a material connection whether or not you were paid. Whether it also needs the ad label depends on one question: did the brand have any say?