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Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
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
Understand
Anything
Never
World
More quotes by 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
A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
William Zinsser
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention.
William Zinsser
What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person who says 'indeed' or 'moreover,' or who calls someone an individual ('he's a fine individual'), please don't write it.
William Zinsser
Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
William Zinsser
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
William Zinsser
All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.
William Zinsser
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser
Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
William Zinsser
I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
William Zinsser
Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser