pdlc-os/writing-clearly-and-concisely
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.
testing
Updated Apr 23, 2026
$ install --global
skillsauthnpx skillsauth add pdlc-os/pdlc writing-clearly-and-conciselyInstall this skill globally with one command. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf.
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Last scanned: Apr 24, 2026, 2:26 AM265.3s2 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.
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.
Related
skills/distill/SKILL.md— after authoring a readable human-facing document, distill it inline when sub-agents will re-read it across later sessions. Writing-clearly composes prose; distill compresses it for LLM consumption without losing facts.
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