writing-clearly-and-concisely

# 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

If you REALLY REALLY need to preserve context, you can skip the full `elements-of-style.md` and instead use Orwell's rules:

- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

## 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.