megalithic/writing-clearly-and-concisely
home/common/programs/ai/pi-coding-agent/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/SKILL.md
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.
$ install --global
skillsauthnpx skillsauth add megalithic/dotfiles writing-clearly-and-conciselyInstall this skill globally with one command. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf.
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Last scanned: Apr 15, 2026, 12:00 PM85.2s2 files scanned
SKILL.md
- 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.
All rules
- 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 {baseDir}/elements-of-style.md and apply the rules.
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