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writing-clearly-and-concisely

1.615 instalações · obra/the-elements-of-style

Open source Repository Open in the app JSON README (API)

About

Skill publicada por obra/the-elements-of-style, com 1.615 instalações medidas pelo skills.sh. Instale com: npx skills add obra/the-elements-of-style@writing-clearly-and-concisely

Details

Kind
Agent skills
Topic
No topic detected
Publisher
obra
Origin
skillssh
Category
ferramentas
Stars
574
Forks
79
Open pull requests
7
Last push
2026-08-12T21:49:28Z
Repository state
ativo
Language
HTML
Added
2026-08-30 15:22:21
Updated
2026-09-01 17:01:24
Origin id
obra/the-elements-of-style/writing-clearly-and-concisely

README

# The Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.'s *The Elements of Style* (1918), packaged as a plugin for coding agents.

## Purpose

This plugin hands your agent Strunk's guidance whenever it writes documentation, commit messages, error text, or any other prose a human will read.

## What's Inside

- **Skill**: `writing-clearly-and-concisely` — when and how to apply Strunk's rules
- **Reference**: the complete 1918 text, roughly 12,000 tokens

The reference covers:

1. **Elementary Rules of Usage** — seven rules of grammar and punctuation
2. **Elementary Principles of Composition** — eleven rules for clear, forceful writing
3. **Words and Expressions Commonly Misused** — an alphabetical guide to usage pitfalls

## Usage

Your agent invokes `writing-clearly-and-concisely` when it writes prose. The skill lists every rule at a glance, warns that the reference costs about 12,000 tokens, and suggests handing a draft to a subagent when context runs short. It opens the full reference only while writing or editing.

## Installing

<!-- everyharness:install:start -->

| Harness | Install |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | see docs/install/claude-code.md |
| Cursor | see docs/install/cursor.md |
| Codex | see docs/install/codex.md |
| Devin CLI | see docs/install/devin.md |
| Kimi Code | see docs/install/kimi.md |
| Gemini CLI | see docs/install/gemini.md |
| OpenCode | see docs/install/opencode.md |
| Pi | see docs/install/pi.md |
| Hermes Agent | see docs/install/hermes.md |
| Agent Plugins 1.0 clients | see docs/install/agent-plugins-1.0.md |
| Factory Droid / Grok / Copilot (marketplace descriptor) | see docs/install/agents-marketplace.md |

<!-- everyharness:install:end -->

Every supported harness reads the skill from `skills/`; the per-harness manifests differ only in where they point.

## Development

[everyharness](https://github.com/prime-radiant-inc/everyharness) generates every harness manifest, bootstrap hook, and install doc from one file: `everyharness.yaml`. Edit that file and the skill, then regenerate:

```
npx everyharness generate
```

Never edit a generated file by hand — `everyharness validate` fails on drift, and the next `generate` overwrites your change. Generated files carry a `GENERATED by everyharness` header, and `.everyharness/manifest.json` lists them all.

## Source

The text is public domain. The 1918 edition came from Project Gutenberg, converted to markdown.

- **Original source**: [Project Gutenberg #37134](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm)
- **Author**: William Strunk Jr.
- **Publication**: 1918
- **License**: Public Domain

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