Use a semicolon to separate word series that contain commas. They bought soda, potato chips, ice cream, and candy; several games and toys; and three books.

Readers will like you if you show that you are human. In a how-to piece, for example, you might write, “This third step is a little hard to master. I ruined six good slides before I got it right. So be smarter than I was; practice on blanks.”

do not pour the clay of your thoughts into the hard mold of some personal writing style that you are determined to have.

“Why am I writing this?”

Do not try to write everything about your subject. All subjects are inexhaustible.

For the writer of average intelligence and education, learning new words is much less important than learning to use easily the words he or she already knows.

You cannot write securely on any subject unless you have gathered far more information than you will use.

I love writing. It’s getting started that I abhor. I tell you this so that you won’t feel alone. You probably go through similar hell before you write. Almost everybody does. The way to eliminate most of these traumas is to write in large blocks of time rather than to try to write for ten minutes here and there.

People is the one subject that everybody cares about.