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Where the male pronoun remains in this edition I felt it was the only solution that wasn’t cumbersome.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next,
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Rewriting it on the spot, he got personal and specific and created a classic: We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.
William Zinsser • Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All
No rule, however, is harder to follow. It requires writers to do two things that by their metabolism are impossible. They must relax, and they must have confidence.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Therefore think small. Decide what corner of your subject you’re going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style and how it obstructs what they are trying to say. If you give me an eight-page article and I tell you to cut it to four pages, you’ll howl and say it can’t be done. Then you’ll go home and do it, and it will be much better. After t
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Remember that words are the only tools you’ve got. Learn to use them with originality and care.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
There is a deep yearning for human contact and a resentment of bombast.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Those of us who are trying to write well about the world we live in, or to teach students to write well about the world they live in, are caught in a time warp, where literature by definition still consists of forms that were certified as “literary” in the 19th century: novels and short stories and poems.