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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
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
Strangling
Jargon
Pompous
Clutter
Disease
American
Writing
Frills
More quotes by William Zinsser
Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
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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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If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.
William Zinsser
Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
William Zinsser
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
William Zinsser
The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
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You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
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Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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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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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.
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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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.
William Zinsser
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
