/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.
$ npx -y skills add obra/the-elements-of-style --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent claude-codeHow it fires
How this skill gets triggered: by you, by Claude, or both.
- Fires itselfAuto-invocation. Claude auto-loads it when your prompt matches the work.Auto-invocation is when the right skill fires by itself at the right moment, driven by a FLOW.md router and a hook, instead of you invoking it by name. It is the difference between a skill being installed and a skill actually getting used.Read the full definition →
- You can call itInvoke it directly when you want it.
- Slash command
/writing-clearly-and-concisely
Context preview
The summary Claude sees to decide when to auto-load this skill.
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.
SKILL.md
writing-clearly-and-concisely.SKILL.mdname: 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.
Read more
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.
A Claude Code plugin providing William Strunk Jr.'s The Elements of Style (1918) as a reference skill for clear, precise writing.