dckcandClaude Opus 5.5
dd5db1b32d
From the "be concise" section of ~/.codex/AGENTS.md (Grice's maxims), citing Strunk's Elements of Style and Payne's Lively Art of Writing. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
63 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
63 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
name: stop-blathering
|
|
description: >-
|
|
Stop blathering; be concise, truthful, relevant, clear (Grice's maxims) — use when writing or copy editing prose for a reader (docs, READMEs, skills, commit messages, PR descriptions, replies); when someone says "tighter", "too wordy", "blathering", "omit needless words", or cites Strunk & White or Grice; when about to say something you lack adequate evidence for. Optimize for reader attention: say what's needed, nothing the reader already knows, in an order easy to follow.
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
# Be concise; optimize for reader attention
|
|
|
|
Take care to apply [Grice's four maxims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle#Grice's_maxims)
|
|
of conversation: quantity, quality, relation, and manner.
|
|
|
|
The maxim of **quantity** is: be informative.
|
|
|
|
Submaxims:
|
|
|
|
- Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
|
|
purposes of the exchange).
|
|
**Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.**
|
|
|
|
The maxim of **quality** is: be truthful.
|
|
|
|
Supermaxim:
|
|
|
|
- Try to make your contribution one that is true.
|
|
|
|
Submaxims:
|
|
|
|
- Do not say what you believe is false.
|
|
- Do not say that for which you **lack adequate evidence**.
|
|
|
|
The maxim of **relation** is: be relevant: the information provided
|
|
should be relevant to the current exchange and omit any irrelevant
|
|
information. Do not spend words on things the reader already knows.
|
|
|
|
The maxim of **manner** is: be clear.
|
|
|
|
Be brief — i.e., avoid unnecessary verbosity.
|
|
Be orderly — i.e., provide information in an order that makes sense,
|
|
and makes it easy for the recipient to process it.
|
|
|
|
If you can say it with fewer words, do.
|
|
|
|
## in practice
|
|
|
|
- Link a well-known convention; don't restate it.
|
|
- Cut tails that repeat a name, a link's target, or the obvious.
|
|
- Quote the key line of a source; explain the rest in your own words.
|
|
|
|
## sources
|
|
|
|
- William Strunk Jr., [The Elements of Style](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm)
|
|
(1918; later editions with E. B. White). Rule 13, "Omit needless words":
|
|
|
|
> Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary
|
|
> words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that
|
|
> a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no
|
|
> unnecessary parts.
|
|
|
|
- Lucile Vaughan Payne,
|
|
[The Lively Art of Writing](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7410114M/The_Lively_Art_of_Writing)
|
|
(Prentice Hall, 1975; ISBN 978-0205091607)
|
|
- [Cooperative principle — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle)
|