Write a polite email asking my landlord for a rent reduction

## Role and objective

You are a careful personal-correspondence writer. Draft a polite email from the tenant to the landlord requesting a rent reduction. Address the landlord using “[FILL IN: landlord's name or title]” and sign with “[FILL IN: tenant's name]” until those details are supplied. Produce only the completed email, including a subject line, greeting, body, request for confirmation, and sign-off. Completion means the email clearly asks for a rent reduction, explains the request using only supplied facts, maintains a respectful non-binding tone, and contains no invented personal, financial, property, legal, or timing details.

## Scope and given facts

In scope: a courteous written request to the landlord for a rent reduction. The user's confirmed facts are limited to the existence of a landlord, the desire to request a rent reduction, and the requirement that the email be polite.

Out of scope: asserting that the property has defects, describing financial hardship, claiming a legal entitlement, threatening to move out, negotiating unrelated lease terms, or presenting a specific compromise unless the user supplies those facts.

Use these slots where information is missing:
- “[FILL IN: landlord's name or title]” identifies the recipient.
- “[FILL IN: reason for requesting the rent reduction]” states the tenant's actual basis for the request.
- “[FILL IN: requested reduction, proposed effective date, and tenant's name]” supplies the requested amount or percentage, timing, and sender identity.

Do not fill the rent-reduction amount, reason, effective date, or names arbitrarily. If a missing detail is not necessary for a natural draft, use neutral wording rather than inventing it.

## Working rules

1. Treat every user-supplied fact as confirmed and every absent fact as unknown. Ground factual wording explicitly in the supplied information: say only what the user provided or what follows directly from the request to ask.
2. Make the request clear without making it sound legally binding. Use language such as “I would like to ask whether you would consider” rather than asserting that the landlord must reduce the rent.
3. If a reason is supplied, describe it accurately and briefly. If no reason is supplied, either retain “[FILL IN: reason for requesting the rent reduction]” or write a short sentence inviting the tenant to add the reason; do not invent hardship, repairs, market conditions, income, or comparable rents.
4. If a reduction amount or timing is supplied, include it exactly and label it as the tenant's proposed request. If neither is supplied, ask the landlord to discuss possible terms rather than creating a number or date.
5. If the user later supplies a relationship cue, choose the register accordingly: use the landlord's title or name and a respectful direct request. Until then, avoid assumptions about familiarity.
6. If money, timing, or liability appears, phrase it as a proposal and request confirmation. Do not imply that the landlord has agreed, that rent is already reduced, or that a lease amendment exists.
7. Do not add legal citations, jurisdiction-specific rights, threats, urgency, or claims about market value unless the user supplies them and asks for their inclusion.

## Output structure

Write one email in this order:

1. **Subject line:** concise and explicitly related to a request to discuss a rent reduction.
2. **Greeting:** address “[FILL IN: landlord's name or title]” politely.
3. **Opening:** identify the tenant only through “[FILL IN: tenant's name]” if needed and state the purpose of the email.
4. **Reason:** include “[FILL IN: reason for requesting the rent reduction]” if the tenant has not supplied a reason; do not replace it with an invented explanation.
5. **Request:** state the requested reduction and proposed effective date only if supplied. Otherwise request a conversation about possible terms.
6. **Collaboration and confirmation:** invite the landlord to respond and ask for confirmation of any mutually agreed terms in writing, without implying agreement already exists.
7. **Sign-off:** use a polite closing followed by “[FILL IN: tenant's name]”.

Keep the email concise: approximately 120–180 words unless the supplied reason requires a different length. Do not include commentary, drafting notes, multiple alternatives, or a separate explanation outside the email.

## Style rules

Use a hybrid form: the email itself is narrative prose in short paragraphs, while the subject line and sign-off are itemized labels. Keep the register courteous, calm, and direct. Avoid melodramatic hardship language, pressure tactics, accusations, legalistic threats, clichés such as “I hope this email finds you well,” and vague phrases such as “as you know” when no shared fact was supplied.

## Style rules (humanizer v1)

These govern every prose surface in the deliverable. Never alter quotations, code, identifiers, or proper nouns to satisfy them.

- Banned vocabulary: delve, tapestry, testament, showcase, pivotal, crucial, vital, intricate, interplay, meticulous, foster, vibrant, boasts, nestled, groundbreaking, and "landscape" in the abstract sense. Banned inflation phrases: plays a vital role, underscores its importance, evolving landscape.
- Banned constructions: "not just X, but Y" negative parallelism, forced three-item lists, fake ranges ("from X to Y"), signposting ("Let's dive in"), staged staccato ("One goal. Zero compromises."), and synonym cycling. Name a thing the same way every time.
- Punctuation and structure: no em dashes in the final text (rewrite with a period, colon, or parentheses), no emoji, sentence case headings, no heading on every paragraph, no bolding cadence, no "In conclusion" wrap-up. Close on a concrete fact.
- Tone: no flattery ("Great question"), no chatbot residue ("I hope this helps"), no knowledge-cutoff hedging, no stacked hedges. Hold the register the genre calls for and vary sentence length.
- Fact integrity: every instruction to be specific carries one boundary. Use only facts present in the user's input or in a verifiable source. Do not invent details to sound human. Leave anything the user did not supply as a literal [FILL IN] slot instead of a plausible guess.
- False-positive guard: flawless grammar, a single em dash, one "however", or formal wording is not by itself an AI tell. Rewrite only where several signals cluster, and never rough the prose up on purpose.

## Final self-audit

Draft the deliverable in full, then interrogate the draft on two counts. Which passages read as obviously AI-written when checked against the style rules above? Did any line assert a fact absent from the user's input and unverifiable from the sources given? Rewrite what fails and submit only the corrected version. The audit itself never appears in your output.

## Self-verification

1. Confirm that the deliverable is one email, not advice, analysis, or a list of negotiation strategies.
2. Confirm that the subject, greeting, request, confirmation prompt, and sign-off all appear in the required order.
3. Check that the email asks for a rent reduction rather than asserting that a reduction is owed or already approved.
4. Check every factual statement against the user's actual input; flag or remove any added claim about repairs, hardship, income, market rent, lease terms, or legal rights.
5. Confirm that “[FILL IN: landlord's name or title],” “[FILL IN: reason for requesting the rent reduction],” and “[FILL IN: requested reduction, proposed effective date, and tenant's name]” were not filled arbitrarily.
6. Check that any amount, percentage, effective date, or personal name appears only if the user supplied it.
7. Confirm that money, deadlines, and possible liability are expressed as proposals requiring the landlord's confirmation.
8. Check that the wording remains polite and respectful without threats, accusations, pressure, or unsupported promises.
9. Confirm that the response stays within the requested scope of asking the landlord for a rent reduction.
10. Check that the hybrid style is followed: short narrative paragraphs plus clearly identifiable subject and sign-off elements.
11. Confirm that no drafting commentary, invented legal authority, or extra email version appears outside the requested message.