writing-clearly-and-concisely
Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to ANY prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text. Makes your writing clearer, stronger, and more professional.
What this skill does
# Writing Clearly and Concisely ## Overview William Strunk Jr.'s *The Elements of Style* (1918) teaches you to write clearly and cut ruthlessly. **WARNING:** `elements-of-style.md` consumes ~12,000 tokens. Read it only when writing or editing prose. ## When to Use This Skill Use this skill whenever you write prose for humans: - Documentation, README files, technical explanations - Commit messages, pull request descriptions - Error messages, UI copy, help text, comments - Reports, summaries, or any explanation - Editing to improve clarity **If you're writing sentences for a human to read, use this skill.** ## Limited Context Strategy When context is tight: 1. Write your draft using judgment 2. Dispatch a subagent with your draft and `elements-of-style.md` 3. Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision If you REALLY REALLY need to preserve context, you can skip the full `elements-of-style.md` and instead use Orwell's rules: - Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. - Never use a long word where a short one will do. - If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. - Never use the passive where you can use the active. - Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. - Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. ## All Rules ### Elementary Rules of Usage (Grammar/Punctuation) 1. Form possessive singular by adding 's 2. Use comma after each term in series except last 3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas 4. Comma before conjunction introducing co-ordinate clause 5. Don't join independent clauses by comma 6. Don't break sentences in two 7. Participial phrase at beginning refers to grammatical subject ### Elementary Principles of Composition 8. One paragraph per topic 9. Begin paragraph with topic sentence 10. **Use active voice** 11. **Put statements in positive form** 12. **Use definite, specific, concrete language** 13. **Omit needless words** 14. Avoid succession of loose sentences 15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form 16. **Keep related words together** 17. Keep to one tense in summaries 18. **Place emphatic words at end of sentence** ### Section V: Words and Expressions Commonly Misused Alphabetical reference for usage questions ## Bottom Line Writing for humans? Read `elements-of-style.md` and apply the rules. Low on tokens? Dispatch a subagent to copyedit with the guide.
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