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Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
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
Paper
Numbers
Word
Purpose
Find
Examine
Every
Surprising
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Number
More quotes by William Zinsser
Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
William Zinsser
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
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
The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.
William Zinsser
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
There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
Good writers are visible just behind their words.
William Zinsser
I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
William Zinsser
Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
William Zinsser
One of the saddest sentences I know is I wish I had asked my mother about that. Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are.
William Zinsser
Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
William Zinsser
Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
William Zinsser
Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
William Zinsser
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.
William Zinsser
