On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

by William Zinsser

The Elements of Style, his updating of the book that had most influenced him, written in 1919 by his English professor at Cornell, William Strunk Jr., was the dominant how-to manual for writers. Tough competition.

Instead of competing with the Strunk & White book I decided to complement it. The Elements of Style was a book of pointers and admonitions: do this, don’t do that.

the professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke.

E. B. White makes the case cogently in The Elements of Style, a book every writer should read once a year,

Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.

“the pen must at length comply with the tongue,” as Samuel Johnson said,

The growing acceptance of the split infinitive, or of the preposition at the end of a sentence, proves that formal syntax can’t hold the fort forever against a speaker’s more comfortable way of getting the same thing said—and

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

you must choose the tense in which you are principally going to address the reader, no matter how many glances you may take backward or forward along the way.

Therefore ask yourself some basic questions before

you start. For example: “In what capacity am I going to address the reader?” (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?) “What pronoun and tense am I going to use?” “What style?” (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?) “What attitude am I going to take toward the material?” (Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?) “How much do I want to cover?” “What one point do I want to make?”

every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five—just one.

Go back to the beginning and rewrite it so that your mood and your style are consistent from start to finish.

There’s nothing in such a method to be ashamed of. Scissors and paste—or their equivalent on a computer—are honorable writers’ tools.

Make active verbs activate your sentences, and avoid the kind that need an appended preposition to complete their work. Don’t set up a business that you can start or launch. Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired? Be precise. Use precise verbs.

strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs.

The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader. Again, the rule is simple: make your

LITTLE QUALIFIERS. Prune out the small words that qualify how you feel and how you think and what you saw: “a bit,” “a little,” “sort of,” “kind of,” “rather,” “quite,” “very,” “too,” “pretty much,” “in a sense” and dozens more. They dilute your style and your persuasiveness. Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be confused. Be tired. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

If the reader catches you in just one bogus statement that you are trying to pass off as true, everything you write thereafter will be suspect.