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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
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
Short
Eyes
Eye
Inspirational
Sentence
Sentences
More quotes by William Zinsser
Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person who says 'indeed' or 'moreover,' or who calls someone an individual ('he's a fine individual'), please don't write it.
William Zinsser
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
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
Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
William Zinsser
Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.
William Zinsser
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
William Zinsser
Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
William Zinsser
Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
William Zinsser
Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.
William Zinsser
The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser
Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
William Zinsser
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
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to personalize the author.
William Zinsser
Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
William Zinsser
If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
William Zinsser
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
