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.

Source: Internalized from elements-of-style plugin (superpowers-marketplace v1.0.0)

WARNING: The full reference (guides/elements-of-style/elements-of-style.html) 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 the reference guide
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 — see guides/elements-of-style/elements-of-style.html

Bottom Line

Writing for humans? Read the reference guide and apply the rules. Low on tokens? Dispatch a subagent to copyedit with the guide.

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

SKILL.md