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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

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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
American
Jargon
Words
Pompous
Writing
Clutter
Unnecessary
Construction
Frills
Meaningless
Constructions
Disease
Strangling
Society
Circular

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
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Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
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No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief
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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.
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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As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention.
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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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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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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
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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.
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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
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Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
William Zinsser
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Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser
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The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
William Zinsser
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Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.
William Zinsser