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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
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
Subjects
Probably
Humanity
Interesting
Avenue
Found
Avenues
Persons
Subject
Person
Follow
Every
Ordinary
More quotes by William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
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Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
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Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader.
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Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
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Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
A writer is always working.
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.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
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
Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.
William Zinsser
