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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.

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
Back
Rode
Churchill
Abraham
Lincoln
Sentence
Sentences
Glory
Declarative
Strong
Winston

More quotes by 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.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
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Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.
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The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
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Good writing is lean and confident.
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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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All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
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Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
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Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
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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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Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
William Zinsser
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You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser