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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
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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
Rooms
Material
Emotion
Piece
Tenaciously
Bring
Materials
Crammed
Moving
Reader
Explaining
Given
Emotional
Resist
Must
Room
Readers
Writer
Content
Pieces
Emotions
More quotes by William Zinsser
Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
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There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.
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Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser
Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
William Zinsser
Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
William Zinsser
The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
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Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
William Zinsser
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
One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
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
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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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
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Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
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Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
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
Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
William Zinsser
