On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

by William Zinsser

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.

Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say?

Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it?

Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper.

First, work hard to master the tools. Simplify, prune and strive for order. Think of this as a mechanical act, and soon your sentences will become cleaner.

Writing is learned by imitation.

bear in mind, when you’re choosing words and stringing them together, how they sound.

Remember that words are the only tools you’ve got. Learn to use them with originality and care. And also remember: somebody out there is listening.

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 number of words on a regular basis.

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. It may be a problem of where to obtain the facts or how to organize the material. It may be a problem of approach or attitude, tone or style. Whatever it is, it has to be confronted and solved.

Scissors and paste—or their equivalent on a computer—are honorable writers’ tools.

Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum.

The large point is one of authority. Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader’s trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don’t diminish that belief. Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.

Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all.

Use your own experience to connect the reader to some mechanism that also touches his life.

Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking;

What is crucial for you as the writer is to express your opinion firmly.

My commodity as a writer, whatever I’m writing about, is me. And your commodity is you. Don’t alter your voice to fit your subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that’s enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés.

Writers who write interestingly tend to be men and women who keep themselves interested. That’s almost the whole point of becoming a writer.

If you want your writing to convey enjoyment, write about people you respect. Writing to destroy and to scandalize can be as destructive to the writer as it is to the subject.

Trust your curiosity to connect with the curiosity of your readers.

As an editor and a teacher I’ve found that the most untaught and underestimated skill in nonfiction writing is how to organize a long article: how to put the jigsaw puzzle together.

Intention is what we wish to accomplish with our writing. Call it the writer’s soul. We can write to affirm and to celebrate, or we can write to debunk and to destroy; the choice is ours.

Writing is related to character. If your values are sound, your writing will be sound. It all begins with intention.

Learning how to organize a long article is just as important as learning how to write a clear and pleasing sentence. 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.

There are many good reasons for writing that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its satisfactions is to come to terms with your life narrative.

Besides wanting to write as well as possible, I wanted to write as entertainingly as possible.