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Writing is a craft not an art.

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
Writing
Craft
Crafts
Inspirational
Art

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
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Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
William Zinsser
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If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
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People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.
William Zinsser
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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser
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Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.
William Zinsser
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Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
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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
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Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
William Zinsser
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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
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
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Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
William Zinsser
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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
William Zinsser
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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
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Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
William Zinsser
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
William Zinsser
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Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
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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