| name | writing-clearly-and-concisely |
| description | Apply Strunk's writing rules to ANY human-read prose — docs, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, UI text. Makes writing clearer, stronger, more professional. |
| user-invocable | false |
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
Don't Sound Like AI Wrote It
Strunk predates the tells. These mark prose as machine-written — cut them:
- Em-dashes. Don't use
—. Use a comma, period, or parentheses. This is the loudest tell.
- Antithesis clichés: "It's not just X, it's Y", "not only… but also", "isn't merely… it's". Say the thing once.
- Forced triads. Three-item lists for rhythm ("clearer, stronger, and faster"). Use the number of items the point needs.
- Inflated vocabulary: delve, leverage, robust, seamless, comprehensive, elevate, unlock, foster, boast, realm, landscape, tapestry, testament, crucial, vital. Plain words instead.
- Throat-clearing: "It's worth noting", "It's important to understand", "That said", "At the end of the day".
- Hollow conclusions: "In conclusion", "Overall", "Ultimately" followed by a restatement. End on the last real point.
- Hedge stacking: "can help to", "may potentially", "might be able to". Commit or cut.
- Decorative bold and emoji. Bold load-bearing terms only; emoji almost never.
- Over-structuring. Not every answer is a bulleted list with headers. Prose is allowed.
Read your draft and ask: would a sharp human write it this way, or does it smell generated? If the latter, plain it down.
Bottom Line
Writing for humans? Read elements-of-style.md, apply the rules, and strip the AI tells above. Low on tokens? Dispatch a subagent to copyedit with the guide.
