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 enhances the clarity and professionalism of your writing by applying the classic principles from William Strunk Jr.'s 'The Elements of Style'. It systematically refines prose by enforcing active voice, omitting needless words, and ensuring specific, concrete language. Whether it's technical documentation or daily communication, this skill transforms wordy drafts into clear, impactful, and professional text.
Use Cases
- Technical Documentation: Polishing README files, API documentation, and technical explanations to ensure they are concise and easy for readers to digest.
- Software Development: Crafting professional commit messages and pull request descriptions that communicate changes clearly to the team.
- UX & UI Copy: Refining error messages, tooltips, and interface text to be direct, helpful, and free of jargon.
- Business Reporting: Editing summaries, reports, and professional emails to remove fluff and strengthen the delivery of key information.
- Content Revision: Using a subagent to copyedit long-form prose against classic grammatical and compositional rules to improve overall readability.
| 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.