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Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
William Zinsser
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William Zinsser
Age: 92 †
Born: 1922
Born: October 7
Died: 2015
Died: May 12
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
New York City
New York
William Knowlton Zinsser
Shouldn
Direct
Keep
Writing
Things
Ratio
Improves
Ratios
More quotes by William Zinsser
A clear sentence is no accident.
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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.
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But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
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Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
William Zinsser
Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
William Zinsser
The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
William Zinsser
A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
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Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
William Zinsser
Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
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Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
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Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
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The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
William Zinsser
A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
William Zinsser
Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
