esh-pfi-infrastructure/persistent-memory.d/2026-09-17-the-mccarthy-register-names-the-punctuation-on-purpose-and.md

[2026-09-17] The mccarthy register names the punctuation ON PURPOSE, and that is a gate-design call made before any McCarthy number existed.

⭐ The mccarthy register names the punctuation ON PURPOSE, and that is a gate-design call made before any McCarthy number existed. eval-*.sh drives the base control arm with the SAME system prompt via --system-from, and voice_distance.py is Burrows's Delta over character bigrams — so a tic left OUT of the register is a cheap win only the adapter can take, on a corpus measuring 0.0 quote marks per 10k against Hemingway's 838. Stating them hands them to the control too. Cost stated up front: the voice axis gets harder, and McCarthy's 276-passage val split (against Brontë's 44) is why that trade is affordable here and was not there.