There are longstanding conventions for how to write those, same as with other languages or automatic document generation tools. Search for "lisp docstring styl

There are longstanding conventions for how to write those, same as with other languages or automatic document generation tools. Search for "lisp docstring style" or something to that effect. Here's a possibly non-authoritative example from the Emacs Lisp community: https://github.com/bbatsov/emacs-lisp-style-guide#docstrings https://github.com/bbatsov/emacs-lisp-style-guide#docstrings Edited to add: Documentation strings actually predate Common Lisp. They were available at least as early as Zetalisp (mid-1970s).