style-prose

When writing or editing text files (markdown, plain text, etc.), use Semantic Line Breaks (sembr.org).

Rules

• Line length: aim for 80-100 characters per line. This is the primary constraint; the rules below serve it.
• Add a line break after each sentence (after ., !, or ?).
• Break at a clause boundary when a line would otherwise exceed ~100 characters.
• Do not micro-split: short clauses, enumerations, and closely related phrases should stay on the same line when they fit within the target length.
• Break before enumerated or itemized lists.
• Do not break within hyphenated words.
• Allow longer lines for URLs, code spans, or markup.

Why

Semantic line breaks make diffs cleaner: editing one clause changes only one line, not the entire paragraph.