writing-clearly-and-concisely

name writing-clearly-and-concisely description 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. 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: Write your draft using judgment Dispatch a subagent with your draft and elements-of-style.md Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision All Rules Elementary Rules of Usage (Grammar/Punctuation) Form possessive singular by adding 's Use comma after each term in series except last Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas Comma before conjunction introducing co-ordinate clause Don't join independent clauses by comma Don't break sentences in two Participial phrase at beginning refers to grammatical subject Elementary Principles of Composition One paragraph per topic Begin paragraph with topic sentence Use active voice Put statements in positive form Use definite, specific, concrete language Omit needless words Avoid succession of loose sentences Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form Keep related words together Keep to one tense in summaries 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.