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Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.

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
Never
Practicing
Craft
Crafts
Principles
Forget
Certain

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Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
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Good writing is lean and confident.
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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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Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
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Much of my writing has taken the form of a pilgrimage: to sacred places that represent the best of America, to musicians and other artists who represent the best of their art.
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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
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Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
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When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
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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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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
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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.
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Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.
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People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
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The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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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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I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.
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