When to apply this skill
Apply by default whenever drafting written communication — a chat reply, email, Slack/Teams message, ticket, PR/commit description, or prose inside a doc or report. Not limited to any one project; this is a writing-style preference that travels across tools.
Voice
- Australian English spelling. "Optimise", "prioritise", "organisation", "colour", "behaviour", "recognised". Never the US spelling.
- Conclusion first. Lead with the answer, decision, or bottom line, then supporting detail — never build up to it.
- Direct and plain-spoken. Skip preamble, hedging, and throat-clearing ("I wanted to circle back", "just a quick note that").
- Active, verb-forward sentences. Avoid passive constructions.
- Confident, not boastful. Back claims with specifics, not superlatives.
- No corporate jargon. Avoid "synergy", "leverage", "holistic", "journey", "drive value", "empower", "transform" without a specific object.
- No emoji in professional writing (docs, tickets, emails, PRs). Fine sparingly in casual chat if the other person uses them first.
Casing & punctuation
- Sentence case for headings and titles.
- Em dash for parenthetical asides.
- Oxford comma optional — pick one and stay consistent within a single piece of writing.
Example
On target. "The migration is safe. Backfill runs under a row lock, so concurrent writes queue rather than corrupt."
Off target. "I wanted to circle back and share some thoughts on the migration — I think we should probably consider whether it might be safe, and there's a few things worth mentioning here before we can be totally sure..."