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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.

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
People
Excess
Realize
Nobody
Style
Realizing
Murkiness
Write
Crept
Writing
Shown
Much
Badly

More quotes by William Zinsser

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There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.
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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
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My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
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To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
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Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to personalize the author.
William Zinsser
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
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Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
William Zinsser
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What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
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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Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.
William Zinsser
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Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.
William Zinsser
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The sound of the bat is the music of spring training.
William Zinsser
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I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
William Zinsser
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There's no subject you don't have permission to write about. Students often avoid subjects close to their heart ... because they assume that their teachers will regard those topics as 'stupid.' No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.
William Zinsser
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Writing is a craft not an art.
William Zinsser
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Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser