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William Zinsser -
On Writing Well (1976)
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One of the saddest sentences I know is "I wish I had asked my mother about that." Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are.
William Zinsser
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Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read." He went on to caution: "But don't go berserk. A succession of tiny paragraphs is as annoying as a paragraph that's too long.
William Zinsser
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Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.
William Zinsser
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We have all suffered more than our share of these sentences in which an exclamation point knocks us over the head with how cute or wonderful something was.
William Zinsser
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You learn to write by writing. It's a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it's true. The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain amount of words on a regular basis.
William Zinsser
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The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.
William Zinsser
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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
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If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
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But ultimately eloquence runs on a deeper current. It moves us with what it leaves unsaid, touching off echoes in what we already know from our reading, our religion and our heritage...It was no accident that Lincoln's speeches resounded with echoes of the King James Bible; he knew it almost by heart from his boyhood.
William Zinsser
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There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.
William Zinsser
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Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author.
William Zinsser
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Probably the finest travel book ever written by an American is Walden, though Thoreau only went a mile out of town.
William Zinsser
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All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative—good old-fashioned storytelling—is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug.
William Zinsser
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The Exclamation Point. Don't use it unless you must to achieve a certain effect. It has a gushy aura, the breathless excitement of a debutante commenting on an event that was exciting only to her.
William Zinsser
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
William Zinsser
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Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
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I almost always urge people to write in the first person. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
William Zinsser
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Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader.
William Zinsser
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
William Zinsser
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Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver—words like enthralling and luminous.
William Zinsser
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I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.
William Zinsser
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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
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The Period. There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
William Zinsser
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You'll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want
William Zinsser
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My roster of the new literature, in short, would include all the writers who come bearing new information and who present it with vigor, clarity and humanity.
William Zinsser
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Quote of the day
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
William Zinsser
Creative Commons
Born:
October 7, 1922
Died:
May 12, 2015
(aged 92)
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