Agent skill · writing content · obra
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.
Why this skill is useful
Codifies clear writing principles that the AI could infer but now has explicit guidelines to follow.
What it needs
About 1k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2025-10-18. 460 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
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: 1. Write your draft using judgment 2. Dispatch a subagent with your draft and elements-of-style.md 3. Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision All Rules Elementary Rules of Usage (Grammar/Punctuation) 1. Form possessive singular by adding 's 2. Use comma after each term in series except last 3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas 4. Comma before conjunction introducing co-ordinate clause 5. Don't join independent clauses by comma 6. Don't break sentences in two 7. Participial phrase at beginning refers to grammatical subject Elementary Principles of Composition 8. One paragraph per topic 9. Begin paragraph with topic sentence 10. Use active voice 11. Put statements in positive form 12. Use definite, specific, concrete language 13. Omit needless words 14. Avoid succession of loose sentences 15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form 16. Keep related words together 17. Keep to one tense in summaries 18. 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.
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills obra/writing-clearly-and-concisely