Dotfiles writing-clearly-and-concisely

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

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/megalithic/dotfiles

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/megalithic/dotfiles "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/home/common/programs/ai/pi-coding-agent/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely" ~/.claude/skills/megalithic-dotfiles-writing-clearly-and-concisely && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: home/common/programs/ai/pi-coding-agent/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely/SKILL.md

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.