home / skills / nilecui / skillsbase / writing-clearly-and-concisely
This skill helps you write clearly and concisely by applying Strunk's rules to documentation, messages, and UI text.
npx playbooks add skill nilecui/skillsbase --skill writing-clearly-and-conciselyReview the files below or copy the command above to add this skill to your agents.
---
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:
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
8. One paragraph per topic
9. Begin paragraph with topic sentence
10. **Use active voice**
11. **Put statements in positive form**
12. **Use definite, specific, concrete language**
13. **Omit needless words**
14. Avoid succession of loose sentences
15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form
16. **Keep related words together**
17. Keep to one tense in summaries
18. **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.
This skill applies William Strunk Jr.'s Elements of Style rules to any prose humans will read. It focuses on clarity, brevity, active voice, and concrete language to make writing stronger and more professional. Use it to edit or generate copy that communicates efficiently and accurately.
The skill inspects prose for common style and usage problems: passive constructions, needless words, vague terms, punctuation and grammar issues, and paragraph structure. It suggests edits that enforce active voice, positive phrasing, definite language, consistent tense, and proper sentence and paragraph organization. When context is limited, it accepts a draft and returns a focused copyedit that follows these rules.
Will this skill rewrite whole documents automatically?
It can rewrite or copyedit sections you provide, but for best results supply the draft and a clear goal (tone, audience, length).
How does it handle specialized terminology?
It preserves domain-specific terms while improving surrounding phrasing; specify if any terms must remain unchanged.