writing-clearly-and-concisely
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.
When & Why to Use This Skill
This Claude skill applies the timeless principles of William Strunk Jr.'s 'The Elements of Style' to any form of human-readable prose. It systematically improves writing clarity, strength, and professionalism by enforcing essential rules such as using active voice, omitting needless words, and ensuring specific, concrete language. Ideal for transforming rough drafts into polished, high-impact communication.
Use Cases
- Technical Documentation: Refining README files, technical explanations, and API documentation to ensure they are concise and easy for developers to follow.
- Software Development: Polishing commit messages, pull request descriptions, and code comments to improve team communication and project maintainability.
- User Experience (UX) Writing: Crafting clear and professional UI copy, error messages, and help text that guide users effectively without unnecessary jargon.
- Business Communication: Editing reports, executive summaries, and professional emails to deliver impactful messages with a strong, authoritative tone.
- Content Editing: Reviewing blog posts or articles to remove redundant phrases and improve the overall flow and readability of the narrative.
| 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.