On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

by William Zinsser

Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well.

That condition was first revealed with the arrival of the word processor. Two opposite things happened: good writers got better and bad writers got worse.

a badly written message can do a lot of damage. So can a badly written Web site. The new age, for all its electronic wizardry, is still writing-based.

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.

Dr. Brock told me he was enormously interested in my answers—it had never occurred to him that writing could be hard. I told him I was just as interested in his answers—it had never occurred to me that writing could be easy. Maybe I should take up surgery on the side.

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.

This is the personal transaction that’s at the heart of good nonfiction writing. Out of it come two of the most important qualities that this book will go in search of: humanity and warmth.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important.

Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing;

The man or woman snoozing in a chair with a magazine or a book is a person who was being given too much unnecessary trouble by the writer.

Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know.

Professional writers are constantly bearded by people who say they’d like to “try a little writing sometime”—meaning

they say, “I could write a book about that.” I doubt it.

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.

“political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Don’t dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don’t interface with anybody.

Today many of those students are professional writers, and they tell me, “I still see your brackets—they’re following me through life.”

you have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up.

you can never forget that you are practicing a craft that’s based on certain principles. If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

First, then, learn to hammer the nails, and if what you build is sturdy and serviceable, take satisfaction in its plain strength.

There is no style store; style is organic to the person doing the writing, as much a part of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of

Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself. 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.

A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.

Therefore I urge people to write in the first person: to use “I” and “me” and “we” and “us.” They put up a fight.

Good writers are visible just behind their words.

If you aren’t allowed to use “I,” at least think “I” while you write, or write the first draft in the first person and then take the “I”s out. It will warm up your impersonal style.

Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.

Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation.

crotchets,

Does this break his last rule?

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.

If you find yourself writing that someone recently enjoyed a spell of illness, or that a business has been enjoying a slump, ask yourself how much they enjoyed it.

readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize. Therefore such matters as rhythm and alliteration are vital to every sentence.

Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge,

One of the words I railed against was “personality,” as in a “TV personality.” But now I wonder if it isn’t the only word for that vast swarm of people who are famous for being famous—and possibly nothing else. What did the Gabor sisters actually do?

We have no king to establish the King’s English; we only have the President’s English, which we don’t want.

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 it shouldn’t.

Companies are downsizing. It’s part of an ongoing effort to grow the business.

I don’t want to give somebody my input and get his feedback, though I’d be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them.

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?”

When your zest begins to ebb, the reader is the first person to know it.

Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead.”

What is "the lead" in our profession - technical writing. Is it a clear sentence that affirms to the reader that they have found the exact bit of information for which they were looking? Such as, "There are a number of methods available for encoding a repeat policy in uAchieve. No matter how odd your instittuion's policy may seem, uAchieve is flexible enough to enforce it through a well-structured requirement."

Sometimes the length may depend on the audience you’re writing for. Readers of a literary review expect its writers to start somewhat discursively, and they will stick with those writers for the pleasure of wondering where they will emerge as they move in leisurely circles toward the eventual point. But I urge you not to count on the reader to stick around. Readers want to know—very soon—what’s in it for them.

Make the reader smile and you’ve got him for at least one more paragraph.

But baseball fans can’t be judged by any reasonable standard. We are obsessed by the minutiae of the game and nagged for the rest of our lives by the memory of players we once saw play. No item is therefore too trivial that puts us back in touch with them. I am just old enough to remember Burleigh Grimes and his well-moistened pitches sailing deceptively to the plate, and when I found his bark I studied it as intently as if I had come upon the Rosetta Stone. “So that’s how he did it,” I thought, peering at the odd botanical relic. “Slippery elm! I’ll be damned.”

Speaking of everybody else’s lead, there are many categories I’d be glad never to see again. One is the future archaeologist: “When some future archaeologist stumbles on the remains of our civilization, what will he make of the jukebox?” I’m tired of him already and he’s not even here.

narrative is the oldest and most compelling method of holding someone’s attention; everybody wants to be told a story.

Like the minister’s sermon that builds to a series of perfect conclusions that never conclude, an article that doesn’t stop where it should stop becomes a drag and therefore a failure.

There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance.