style-analysis

Style Analysis

A method for analyzing text and producing comprehensive writing style guides. This is the meta-tool — it's how voice profiles like the community-post skill were created.

Method

Step 1: Read and Absorb

Read all provided text samples. Don't analyze yet — just absorb. Get a feel for the rhythm, the word choices, the patterns. Read it like a reader, not a critic.

Step 2: Identify Style Characteristics

Analyze across these dimensions:

• Tone and voice: Formal, casual, authoritative, conversational, technical, warm, dry
• Sentence structure: Length distribution, complexity, rhythm patterns, use of fragments
• Word choice and vocabulary: Technical depth, accessibility, distinctive terms, avoidances
• Organization and flow: How ideas connect, paragraph structure, use of transitions
• Purpose and audience: Who this is written for, what it aims to achieve
• Formatting and presentation: Headers, lists, code blocks, emphasis patterns
• What's absent: What this author doesn't do is as revealing as what they do

Step 3: Extract Representative Passages

Select 5 passages that best exemplify the style. For each, note specifically what makes it characteristic — the sentence structure, the word choice, the way it opens or closes.

Step 4: Generate Anti-Examples

Write 5 passages that deliberately break the style, each in a different way. For each, explain precisely why it doesn't fit. Common anti-patterns:

• Too formal/academic
• Too casual/slangy
• Too marketing/buzzword-heavy
• Too vague/unspecific
• Too dry/documentation-style (when the author is warmer)
• Too emotional (when the author is restrained)

Step 5: Synthesize the Guide

Produce a style guide with:

1. Overall assessment: 2-3 sentences capturing the essence
2. Detailed characteristics: Each with specific examples from the text
3. Representative passages: The 5 best examples with annotations
4. Anti-examples: The 5 generated violations with explanations
5. Quick reference rules: Bullet list of dos and don'ts for someone writing in this voice

Output Format

The output should be structured as a skill-ready document — someone could take it and use it as a SKILL.md for a new writing voice. Include enough detail that an AI assistant could reliably produce text in this voice without seeing the original samples.