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Writing clearly and concisely

Skill softaworks/agent-toolkit/dist/plugins/writing-clearly-and-concisely/skills/writing-clearly-and-concisely

Use when writing prose humans will read—documentation, commit messages, error messages, explanations, reports, or UI text. Applies Strunk's timeless rules for clearer, stronger, more professional writing.From its SKILL.md

Install
npx -y skills add softaworks/agent-toolkit --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

SKILL.md

3.7 KB, 801 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Writing Clearly and Concisely

Overview

Write with clarity and force. This skill covers what to do (Strunk) and what not to do (AI patterns).

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 the relevant section file
  3. Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision

Loading a single section (~1,000-4,500 tokens) instead of everything saves significant context.

Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.'s The Elements of Style (1918) teaches you to write clearly and cut ruthlessly.

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:

  1. One paragraph per topic
  2. Begin paragraph with topic sentence
  3. Use active voice
  4. Put statements in positive form
  5. Use definite, specific, concrete language
  6. Omit needless words
  7. Avoid succession of loose sentences
  8. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form
  9. Keep related words together
  10. Keep to one tense in summaries
  11. Place emphatic words at end of sentence

Reference Files

The rules above are summarized from Strunk's original text. For complete explanations with examples:

SectionFile~Tokens
Grammar, punctuation, comma rules02-elementary-rules-of-usage.md2,500
Paragraph structure, active voice, concision03-elementary-principles-of-composition.md4,500
Headings, quotations, formatting04-a-few-matters-of-form.md1,000
Word choice, common errors05-words-and-expressions-commonly-misused.md4,000

Most tasks need only 03-elementary-principles-of-composition.md — it covers active voice, positive form, concrete language, and omitting needless words.

AI Writing Patterns to Avoid

LLMs regress to statistical means, producing generic, puffy prose. Avoid:

  • Puffery: pivotal, crucial, vital, testament, enduring legacy
  • Empty "-ing" phrases: ensuring reliability, showcasing features, highlighting capabilities
  • Promotional adjectives: groundbreaking, seamless, robust, cutting-edge
  • Overused AI vocabulary: delve, leverage, multifaceted, foster, realm, tapestry
  • Formatting overuse: excessive bullets, emoji decorations, bold on every other word

Be specific, not grandiose. Say what it actually does.

For comprehensive research on why these patterns occur, see signs-of-ai-writing.md. Wikipedia editors developed this guide to detect AI-generated submissions — their patterns are well-documented and field-tested.

Bottom Line

Writing for humans? Load the relevant section from elements-of-style/ and apply the rules. For most tasks, 03-elementary-principles-of-composition.md covers what matters most.

What ships with it: 7 files

170.1 KB alongside SKILL.md

elements-of-style/

Gives 1 of the 12 instructions most docs writing skills give in 801 tokens

Counted across 1,951 of the 3,904 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-09-06

  • Use third-person for skill descriptionsin 54 of 1951, across 35 files
  • Start descriptions with Use whenin 43 of 1951, across 29 files
  • Run baseline scenarios before writing any skillin 40 of 1951, across 26 files
  • Use active voicehere, and in 40 of 1951, across 36 files
  • Map file responsibilities before defining tasksin 36 of 1951, across 29 files
  • Use checkbox syntax for tracking stepsin 35 of 1951, across 27 files
  • Ask one question at a timein 35 of 1951
  • Offer execution options after saving the planin 33 of 1951, across 24 files
  • Include complete code in every stepin 33 of 1951, across 27 files
  • Design units with clear boundaries and interfacesin 31 of 1951, across 23 files
  • Announce the skill usage at the startin 30 of 1951
  • Verify agent compliance after adding the skillin 29 of 1951, across 17 files

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.

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