On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

by William Zinsser

It’s amazing how often an editor can throw away the first three or four paragraphs of an article, or even the first few pages, and start with the paragraph where the writer begins to sound like himself or herself. Not only are those first paragraphs impersonal and ornate; they don’t say anything—they are a self-conscious attempt at a fancy prologue.

Don’t worry about whether the reader will “get it” if you indulge a sudden impulse for humor. If it amuses you in the act of writing, put it in. (It can always be taken out, but only you can put it in.)

You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for.

Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. If you’re not a person who says “indeed” or “moreover,” or who calls someone an individual (“he’s a fine individual”), please don’t write it.

It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true.

For the nonfiction writer, the simplest way of putting this into a rule is: when you’re ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

This is adjective-by-habit—a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.

The Period. There’s not much to be said about the period except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough.

Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with “but.” If that’s what you learned, unlearn it—there’s

Write about your hobbies:

Interviewing is one of those skills you can only get better at. You will never again feel so ill at ease as when you try it for the first time,

if you find here of your notes a comment that perfectly amplifies a point here—a point made earlier in the interview—you will do everyone a favor if you link the two thoughts, letting the second sentence follow and illustrate the first. This may violate the truth of how the interview actually progressed, but you will be true to the intent of what was said. Play with the quotes by all means—selecting, rejecting, thinning, transposing their order, saving a good one for the end.

BAD: Mr. Smith said that he liked to “go downtown once a week and have lunch with some of my old friends.” GOOD: “I usually like to go downtown once a week,” Mr. Smith said, “and have lunch with some of my old friends.” The second sentence has vitality, the first one is dead. Nothing is deader than to start a sentence with a “Mr. Smith said” construction—it’s where many readers stop reading.

don’t strain to find synonyms for “he said.” Don’t make your man assert, aver and expostulate just to avoid repeating “he said,” and please—please!—don’t write “he smiled” or “he grinned.” I’ve never heard anybody smile. The reader’s eye skips over “he said” anyway, so it’s not worth a lot of fuss. If you crave variety, choose synonyms that catch the shifting nature of the conversation. “He pointed out,” “he explained,” “he replied,” “he added”—these all carry a particular meaning.

Nobody turns so quickly into a bore as a traveler home from his travels. He enjoyed his trip so much that he wants to tell us all about it—and “all” is what we don’t want to hear.

What made his trip different from everybody else’s? What can he tell us that we don’t already know? We don’t want him to describe every ride at Disneyland, or tell us that the Grand Canyon is awesome, or that Venice has canals. If one of the rides at Disneyland got stuck, if somebody fell into the awesome Grand Canyon, that would be worth hearing about.

Eliminate every such fact that is a known attribute: don’t tell us that the sea had waves and the sand was white. Find details that are significant.

If travel is broadening, it should broaden more than just our knowledge of how a Gothic cathedral looks or how the French make wine. It should generate a whole constellation of ideas about how men and women work and play, raise their children, worship their gods, live and die. The books by Britain’s desert-crazed scholar-adventurers

It was when I found out I had to talk that school became a misery,

It’s far easier to bury Caesar than to praise him—and that goes for Cleopatra, too. But to say why you think a play is good, in words that don’t sound banal, is one of the hardest chores in the business.

“A Look at Organized Crime,”

I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting.

Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it’s funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day’s work. It doesn’t bother me that a certain number of readers will not be amused; I know that a fair chunk of the population has no sense of humor—no idea that there are people in the world trying to entertain them.

One day I told my psychiatrist that what I really wanted to do was to quit my job and just write poetry. And the psychiatrist said, ‘Why not?’ And I said, ‘What would the American Psychoanalytical Association say?’ And he said, ‘There’s no party line.’ So I did.”

Red Smith, delivering the eulogy at the funeral of a fellow sportswriter, said, “Dying is no big deal. Living is the trick.” One of the reasons I admired Red Smith was that he wrote about sports for 55 years, with grace and humor, without succumbing to the pressure, which was the ruin of many sportswriters, that he ought to be writing about something “serious.” He found in sportswriting what he wanted to do and what he loved doing, and because it was right for him he said more important things about American values than many writers who wrote about serious subjects—so seriously that nobody could read them.

If you write about subjects you think you would enjoy knowing about, your enjoyment will show in what you write.

Writing is related to character. If your values are sound, your writing will be sound.

Fondness for material you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to gather isn’t a good enough reason to include it if it’s not central to the story you’ve chosen to tell. Self-discipline bordering on masochism is required. The only consolation for the loss of so much material is that it isn’t totally lost; it remains in your writing as an intangible that the reader can sense. Readers should always feel that you know more about your subject than you’ve put in writing.