Boilerplate
A fixed block of text reused word for word: the 'About us' paragraph, the email footer, the standard legal line.
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What it is
Boilerplate is text written once, approved once, and pasted unchanged wherever it is needed. The classic one is the press release boilerplate: the 'About [Company]' paragraph sitting at the bottom of every release. Email footers, license blocks, contract clauses, and the speaker bio you send conference organizers are all boilerplate. The name is from 19th century printing, when syndicated columns and ads shipped to newspapers as ready-made steel plates that looked like boiler plate and could not be edited.
Write some the moment people start retyping the same words from memory and drifting a little each time. Approve one canonical version, keep it where writers already are (the copy deck, the CMS, a snippet expander), and give it lengths: 25 words, 50 words, 100 words. The lengths matter more than the polish, because the usual reason someone rewrites your boilerplate is that the only version on file does not fit the slot.
Gotcha: boilerplate ages in silence. It carries facts (headcount, funding round, 'the leading platform for') that quietly stop being true, then copy themselves onto every release after that. Give it an owner and a review date. Second gotcha: the word covers two different things. To developers, boilerplate is the repetitive setup code a framework forces on you, and that sense is almost always a complaint. In writing it can go either way: an approved reusable block is an asset, while 'that contract is pure boilerplate' or 'the press release was boilerplate' means nobody bothered to think. Check which one the room means before you agree with them.
Ask AI for it
Using [approved company fact sheet] and [canonical website URL], write company boilerplate in three lengths: 25 words, 50 words, and a 100-word press release version ending with the URL. Each one states what the company does, who it is for, and one checkable proof point drawn only from the fact sheet (year founded, customer count, funding). Use only supplied facts and claims: never guess a number, a date, or a superlative, and list any proof point the fact sheet is missing as a gap for someone to fill. Keep the same claims in the same order across all three so they read as one block cut shorter, with no adjectives that cannot be verified and no phrases like 'industry leading'. Then list every fact used (numbers, titles, product names) as a review checklist.