writing-clearly-and-concisely

Name: writing-clearly-and-concisely
Author: obra

Apply Strunk's timeless writing rules to improve clarity and professionalism across all prose. Covers 18 core rules spanning grammar, punctuation, composition principles, and common usage mistakes Emphasizes active voice, positive framing, concrete language, and ruthless word elimination as key clarity drivers Designed for documentation, commit messages, error messages, UI copy, reports, and any prose humans will read Includes token-efficient subagent dispatch pattern: write a draft, then have a subagent copyedit using the full style guide when context is constrained

INSTALLATION

npx skills add https://github.com/obra/the-elements-of-style --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely

Run in your project or agent environment. Adjust flags if your CLI version differs.

SKILL.md

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.