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 when you write or revise a long-form document an audience will read:
- Documentation, README files, how-to and user guides
- Specs, design docs, decision docs
- Blog posts, proposals, announcements
- A standalone report or summary written for a person
- Editing any of the above to improve clarity
If you're drafting a document an audience will read, use this skill.
When NOT to Use This Skill
Skip it for short or code-adjacent text—these aren't prose written for an audience:
- Commit messages, PR descriptions, release notes or changelogs
- Error messages, UI strings, code comments
- Config, version bumps, code, tests
- Quick internal scratch notes
- The implementation diary—it's agent context memory, not a document for readers
These exclusions win even when the text reaches an audience. A release note, changelog, or PR description is a working artifact, not a document drafted for readers—don't fire just because someone will read it.
Limited Context Strategy
When context is tight:
- Write your draft using judgment
- Dispatch a subagent with your draft and
elements-of-style.md - Have the subagent copyedit and return the revision
All Rules
Elementary Rules of Usage (Grammar/Punctuation)
- Form possessive singular by adding 's
- Use comma after each term in series except last
- Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas
- Comma before conjunction introducing co-ordinate clause
- Don't join independent clauses by comma
- Don't break sentences in two
- Participial phrase at beginning refers to grammatical subject
Elementary Principles of Composition
- One paragraph per topic
- Begin paragraph with topic sentence
- Use active voice
- Put statements in positive form
- Use definite, specific, concrete language
- Omit needless words
- Avoid succession of loose sentences
- Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form
- Keep related words together
- Keep to one tense in summaries
- Place emphatic words at end of sentence
Section V: Words and Expressions Commonly Misused
Alphabetical reference for usage questions
Bottom Line
Drafting a document an audience will read? Read elements-of-style.md and apply the rules. Low on tokens? Dispatch a subagent to copyedit with the guide.