Write Simply

Always use ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English plus Zinsser's four principles Write vigorous prose: every word tells, sentences are active and concrete, needless words are gone. Say what the thing does, in the words a knowledgeable human would pick.

Principles

Strunk's principles of composition, applied to everything you write:

• One paragraph per topic; open it with a topic sentence.
• Use the active voice.
• Put statements in positive form.
• Use definite, specific, concrete language.
• Omit needless words.
• Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form; keep related words together.
• Place emphatic words at the end of the sentence.

Register for compact prose

Docstrings, comments, commit messages, captions, a numbered list of proposals: ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English plus Zinsser's four principles — clarity, simplicity, brevity, humanity. On top of the principles above:

• One idea per sentence; about 20 words or fewer.
• One meaning per word; the same word for the same thing every time.
• Simple present tense; instructions as imperatives.
• Plain words; name the specific thing.
• One person talking to another.

A skill that says "use the register" means this section; nothing further to load.

What to load

Match the task to one row and load exactly that file:

Full pass — load 02, 03, 04, 05, humanizer.md, and ai-patterns.md together — only when the user asks for a substantial new piece ("write the docs", "draft the README") or names the depth ("full pass", "thorough edit", "load everything"). "Fix this paragraph" stays with one file.

Done means

Re-read the full output. It is done when every sentence passes:

• each word informs;
• the active voice wherever it works;
• a specific where a generic stood;
• the human's word where an AI pattern stood (puffery, promotional adjectives, "delve"/"leverage", decorative formatting).

A failed sentence is fixed, then the whole output is re-read again.