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.