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Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.

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
Trying
Surprisingly
Constantly
Writers
Asks
Often
Must

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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
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Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
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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.
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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
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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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Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.
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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
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
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People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
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If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
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Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
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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.
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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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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.
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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
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Writing is a craft not an art.
William Zinsser
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser