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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.

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
Spring
Training
Sound
Music
Bats

More quotes by William Zinsser

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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
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What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Writing is a craft not an art.
William Zinsser
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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
William Zinsser
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Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
William Zinsser
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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
William Zinsser
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Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
William Zinsser
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Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.
William Zinsser
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If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
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The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
William Zinsser
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I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
William Zinsser
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Finding a voice that your readers will enjoy is largely a matter of taste. Saying that isn't much help-taste is a quality so intangible that it can't even be defined. But we know it when we meet it.
William Zinsser