What is new-yorker-style?

This Claude skill enables users to craft sophisticated prose by applying The New Yorker's iconic literary style and rigorous house conventions. It ensures clarity, rhythmic sentence construction, and precise punctuation—including the signature diaeresis and British-influenced spellings—to elevate essays, articles, and long-form journalism to professional magazine-quality standards.

When should I use new-yorker-style?

new-yorker-style is useful in the following scenarios: • Drafting long-form journalism, profiles, or essays that require an urbane, witty, and accessible voice characteristic of high-end literary publications. • Editing existing manuscripts to strictly adhere to specific house styles, including the use of serial commas, em dashes, and phrasal adjective hyphenation. • Applying advanced and rare punctuation conventions such as the diaeresis (e.g., 'coöperate') and British-influenced spellings (e.g., 'focussed') for a distinctive aesthetic. • Refining prose rhythm and flow by balancing complex, elegant sentences with punchy, short ones to enhance reader engagement and clarity. • Transforming standard non-fiction into sophisticated literary prose by removing jargon, clichés, and passive voice while maintaining a conversational yet formal tone.

name	new-yorker-style
description	Write prose in The New Yorker's distinctive literary style. Applies the magazine's house conventions (diaeresis, British spellings, serial comma), elegant sentence construction, and commitment to clarity. Use when writing essays, articles, profiles, long-form journalism, or any sophisticated prose. Triggers on requests for "New Yorker style," literary writing, magazine-quality prose, or elegant nonfiction.

The New Yorker Writing Style

Write with clarity, harmony, truth, and unfailing courtesy to the reader. This skill applies The New Yorker's distinctive voice: urbane yet accessible, witty without being precious, sophisticated but never obscure.

Core Philosophy

Ved Mehta, staff writer from 1961–1994, distilled the style: "Clarity, harmony, truth and unfailing courtesy to the reader."

David Foster Wallace articulated what this means in practice:

"In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there's some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader—even though it's mediated by a kind of text—there's an electricity about it."

The reader cannot read your mind. Every word must earn its place.

Voice and Tone

The New Yorker Sound

Urbane but not elitist: Assume an intelligent, curious reader
Literary yet conversational: Balance formality with warmth
Witty without straining: Humor emerges from observation, not forced cleverness
Precise but not pedantic: Choose the exact word, not the impressive one

What to Avoid

Sentimentality or sensationalism
Jargon without explanation
Clichés and vogue expressions
Excessive qualification ("very," "really," "quite")
The passive voice when active would serve

Sentence Craft

Rhythm and Variation

Follow a long, complex sentence with a short, punchy one:

"By 2000, the investigation of the helicopter-conversion industry was winding down, with disappointing results for Wales and the U.S. Attorney's Office. Only one case remained."

Begin paragraphs with short sentences when appropriate:

"Progress came slowly. Anderson remained the only suspect; in 2004, the Seattle Times reported that the F.B.I. had searched Anderson's home."

Sentence Openers

Start sentences with light openers—transitional words, subordinate clauses, or scene-setting phrases:

"Wales, an Assistant United States Attorney in Seattle, had planned to have dinner with his girlfriend. But that afternoon Wales called and said he had projects to work on at home."

Linking and Flow

Link the first sentence of a paragraph to the last sentence of the preceding one:

"Neither Wales's romantic life nor the fender bender yielded promising leads in the murder investigation.

Wales's work on gun control also failed to produce suspects."

Convey chronology through transition phrases rather than bare dates:

"Three months before his death..."
"About fifteen minutes later..."
"Two weeks after the murder..."
"Meanwhile..."
"Not long after the meeting..."

Punctuation

The New Yorker follows "close punctuation"—commas fall with precision, as E.B. White observed, "like knives in a circus act, outlining the victim."

The Serial Comma

Always use it:

"She bought apples, oranges, and pears."

Em Dashes

Set off explanatory phrases with em dashes for emphasis and clarity:

"The proposal brought out the full might of the gun-control lobby, which spent four million dollars—primarily on television advertisements and direct-mail appeals—and voters rejected the measure."

Use dashes when commas would create ambiguity.

Semicolons

Reserve for parallel constructions:

"United States Attorneys establish the priorities for each of the nation's ninety-four judicial districts and announce significant indictments; Assistant U.S. Attorneys are more like civil servants; they perform the day-to-day work."

Colons

Use to introduce an explanation that could stand as a complete sentence:

"The phrase was partly a joke, a bit of feigned grandiosity to justify a tendency toward excessive meticulousness: Wales did things slowly."

Hyphens

Hyphenate phrasal adjectives for clarity:

cell-phone towers
gun-control initiative
death-penalty case
law-enforcement official
forty-year-old pilot
highest-ranking official

House Style Conventions

The Diaeresis

The New Yorker uses the diaeresis (not umlaut) over the second vowel in doubled-vowel pairs to indicate a new syllable:

coöperate (not cooperate or co-operate)
reëlect
reëmerge
reëxamine
preëminent

Also retain accents in borrowed words:

naïve
élite
résumé
café

British-Influenced Spellings

Double consonants where American usage would not:

focussed (not focused)
travelling (not traveling)
marvellous (not marvelous)
kidnapped
worshipped

Distinctive Spellings

theatre (not theater)
carrousel (not carousel)
vender (not vendor)
teen-ager (hyphenated)
per cent (two words)
good-by (hyphenated)

Recent Updates (2025)

inbox (formerly in-box)
website (formerly Web site)
internet (formerly Internet)
cellphone (formerly cell phone)

The Writing Process

Draft with Deliberation

Wallace advocated writing by hand for early drafts: "Writing makes me slow down in a way that helps me pay attention." Whether handwritten or typed, the first draft should emerge slowly enough for genuine thought.

Revision as Respect

"One of the things that's good about writing and practicing writing is it's a great remedy for my natural self-involvement and self-centeredness... I never forget there's someone on the end of the line, that I owe that person certain allegiances."

Each revision asks: Does this serve the reader?

Earning Interest

Wallace's humbling insight for every writer:

"I am not, in and of myself, interesting to a reader. If I want to seem interesting, work has to be done in order to make myself interesting."

Fact-Checking Ethic

In 1927, The New Yorker ran an article about Edna St. Vincent Millay with multiple errors, and her mother threatened to sue. The magazine developed the most rigorous fact-checking process in American journalism.

Apply this standard:

Verify every name, date, title, and statistic
Question every quotation—is this precisely what was said?
Check obvious "facts" hardest; familiarity breeds false confidence
When uncertain, investigate rather than assume

Quick Reference

Element	New Yorker Style
Serial comma	Always
Theatre/theater	theatre
Focused/focussed	focussed
Traveled/travelled	travelled
Cooperate	coöperate
Naive	naïve
Elite	élite
Teenager	teen-ager
Percent	per cent
Website	website (as of 2025)
Internet	internet (as of 2025)

new-yorker-style

When & Why to Use This Skill

Use Cases