The guideline
On a pricing FAQ entry, a policy page (refunds, shipping, cancellation, privacy, terms) or a support or help article, open with the direct answer to the question the content exists to answer — the price, the deadline, the eligibility rule, the fix — stated in the first sentence or two, before any scene-setting, company narrative, or procedural preamble. Order supporting detail, exceptions and process steps after the lead, in decreasing order of importance, so a reader who stops after the opening still has the answer. This unit is scoped to pricing, policy and support prose specifically, and does not extend to the surfaces three published units already own: a homepage's problem-before-solution narrative is homepage.pain-point-before-solution's ground, a feature's benefit framing is homepage.features-as-benefits's, and a product description's scannable opening is product_detail.description-scannability's. None of the three addresses a refund policy's opening line, a pricing FAQ's answer, or a support article's fix — which is the ground this unit owns.
Common failures
- A pricing FAQ entry, policy page, or support article opens with scene-setting, company narrative, or procedural preamble, and the fact a reader is actually looking for — the price, the deadline, the eligibility rule, the fix — appears only after one or more paragraphs of preamble.
Where it applies
Pages
Disciplines
Devices
Why it matters, how to fix it, and the research behind it
Rubric's full guide adds the reasoning, the fix and the sources for this check, and checks your client's pages against it and hundreds of others. Findings come back worst first.