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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?

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
Asks
Next
Doe
Sentence
Problem
Sentences
Need
Solve
Needs
Reader
Writing
Problems
Every
Stop

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The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
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Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
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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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Writing is a craft not an art.
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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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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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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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The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
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Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
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The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
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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.
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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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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
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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.
William Zinsser