Quote

Finding a voice that your readers will enjoy is largely a matter of taste. Saying that isn't much help-taste is a quality so intangible that it can't even be defined. But we know it when we meet it.

William Zinsser

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Helping
Meet
Matter
Reader
Writing
Taste
Intangible
Even
Saying
Largely
Much
Quality
Readers
Help
Defined
Enjoy
Findings
Voice
Finding

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
Image
There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
Image
Memoir isn't the summary of a life it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not it's a deliberate construction.
William Zinsser
Image
Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is linear and sequential Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser
Image
Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
Image
If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.
William Zinsser
Image
Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
William Zinsser
Image
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser
Image
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
Image
Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
William Zinsser
Image
One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
William Zinsser
Image
Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
Image
I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
William Zinsser
Image
Writing is hard work.
William Zinsser
Image
Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
William Zinsser