Writing Clearly And Concisely

obra/the-elements-of-style/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely

by obra05fc4f0d2b97No license594 starsListed Oct 8, 2026Updated Oct 8, 2026Repository updated 8 weeks ago

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.

Instructions onlyWriting & Content
AI-generated overview

Applies Strunk's Elements of Style rules to make any human-facing prose clearer, stronger, and more concise.

What it does
Provides a checklist of Strunk's rules for grammar, punctuation, composition, and commonly misused words, and directs the agent to apply them when drafting or editing prose. It covers usage rules, composition principles such as active voice, positive form, concrete language, and omitting needless words, plus an alphabetical reference for usage questions. It also describes a limited-context strategy in which a subagent copyedits a draft using the bundled guide and returns the revision.
When to use it
Use it whenever writing or editing sentences meant for humans to read, such as documentation, README files, technical explanations, commit messages, pull request descriptions, error messages, UI copy, help text, comments, reports, and summaries. It is also intended for editing existing text to improve clarity. When context is tight, it suggests dispatching a subagent to copyedit instead of loading the full guide.
Requirements
No scripts or tools; the skill is instructions only. It references a bundled reference file, elements-of-style.md, which is about 12,000 tokens and is read only when writing or editing prose.

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

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

  1. One paragraph per topic
  2. Begin paragraph with topic sentence
  3. Use active voice
  4. Put statements in positive form
  5. Use definite, specific, concrete language
  6. Omit needless words
  7. Avoid succession of loose sentences
  8. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form
  9. Keep related words together
  10. Keep to one tense in summaries
  11. 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.

Source and attribution

Source:obra/the-elements-of-styleinskills/writing-clearly-and-conciselyat commit05fc4f0

License: No license

Content belongs to its original authors. SourceWeft indexes it from a public repository.

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