Quote

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . 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.

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
Kind
Trust
Diminish
Believe
Saying
Bold
Good
Belief
Confident
Away
Prose
Hedge
Littles
Readers
Timidity
Little
Believes
Fraction
Writing
Reader
Fractions
Every
Writer
Lean

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.
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Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
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Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with but. If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.
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All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
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Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. 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.
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Much of my writing has taken the form of a pilgrimage: to sacred places that represent the best of America, to musicians and other artists who represent the best of their art.
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If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.
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Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.
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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
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It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
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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. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
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Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
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A writer is always working.
William Zinsser