| 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.
All rules
- 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 {baseDir}/elements-of-style.md and apply the rules.
