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Writing Clearly And Concisely

obra/the-elements-of-style

Applies Strunk and White's *Elements of Style* to any prose Claude writes for humans: docs, commit messages, error text, UI copy, reports. The full guide is about 12,000 tokens, so the skill recommends dispatching a subagent to copyedit when context is tight. Focuses on the classics like active voice, omitting needless words, and putting emphatic words at sentence ends. Honestly, these rules hold up a century later. If you're having Claude write anything beyond code comments, this will make the output tighter and more professional. The skill includes all 18 core rules plus a reference section on commonly misused words.

install copies · 90 days. Times the install command was copied on this site in the last 90 days, bots filtered.
14
skills.sh installs
2.2K
GitHub stars
617
last updated
Aug 21, 2026
View on GitHub

Install

$ npx -y skills add obra/the-elements-of-style --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

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

SKILL.md on GitHub

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Details

Repository
github.com/obra/the-elements-of-style
Categories
Git & Pull Requests, Documentation, Code Review & Quality, Debugging
First seen
May 16, 2026

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