Writing Clearly And Concisely
Teaches you to write like Strunk instead of like ChatGPT. The skill loads sections from The Elements of Style when you're writing documentation, commit messages, error text, or anything humans read. Most of the time you'll want the composition principles section, which covers active voice, cutting needless words, and being concrete instead of vague. It also flags the statistical tells of AI writing: puffery like "crucial" and "vital", empty gerunds like "showcasing capabilities", and overused LLM vocabulary like "delve" and "leverage". The approach is simple: write your draft, load the relevant 1,000 to 4,500 token section, and edit against the rules. Gets you clearer prose without the generic fluff.
- skills.sh installs
- 4.4K
- GitHub stars
- 2.7K
- last updated
- Aug 21, 2026
Install
$ npx -y skills add softaworks/agent-toolkit --skill writing-clearly-and-concisely --agent claude-codeInstalls into .claude/skills of the current project.
Files
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:
- Write your draft using judgment
- Dispatch a subagent with your draft and the relevant section file
- 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):
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- Repository
- github.com/softaworks/agent-toolkit
- Categories
- Git & Pull Requests, Documentation, AI & Agent Building, Debugging
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