On Writing Well

By William Zinsser (1990)

My Notes

Rewrite again and again: reorganise thoughts, simplify, remove clutter.

He makes the distinction between communication, with which you achieve clarity, and style, which takes a while to develop and changes over time.

“In terms of craft, there’s no excuse for losing the reader through sloppy workmanship. If he drowses off in the middle of your article because you have been careless about a technical detail, the fault is yours. But on the larger issue of whether the reader likes you, or likes what you are saying oh how are you are saying it, or agrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humour, or your vision of life, don’t give him a moments worry.” 28

Take notice what your words mean and are saying. E.g., avoid redundant adverbs/adjectives: blare loudly, totally flabbergasted. Prefer verbs that don’t need a proposition: start or launch instead of set up.

Don’t use tired, empty phrases. Don’t succumb to fads.

Consider how the words and phrases sound. Words that carry an image or sound “of what they mean: flail, poke, dazzle, squash, beguile, pamper, swagger, wheedle, vex.” 109

From The Elements of Style (E B White), Thomas Paine’s phrase—

“These are the times that try men’s souls”

—versus rearrangements:

Paine’s phrase is like poetry and the other four are like oatmeal, which, of course, is the divine mystery of the creative process. 39

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis. 59

Unity of pronoun, tense, mood… Think small. Forget about covering everything, otherwise it could turn into a horrible mess.

This is non-fiction remember: lead with why the piece was written. Use the last sentence of each paragraph as a springboard to the next.

Don’t drag out the ending. Finish (surprisingly) early, and delight. “What delights us subconsciously, is the playwright’s perfect control.” 77

Prune out the small words that qualify how you feel and how you think and what you saw: “a bit,” “a little,” “sort of,” “kind of, “rather,” “quite,” “very,” “too,” “pretty much,” “in a sense,” and dozens more. They dilute both your style and your persuasiveness. 111

Good writing is lean and confident. 111

If you change the mood, alert the reader at the start of a sentence (not at the end).

At least a dozen words will do this job for you: “but,” “yet,” “however,” “nevertheless,” “still,” “instead,” “thus,” “therefore,” “meanwhile,” “now,” “later,” “today,” “subsequently,”…

You can start a sentence with “but.”

Long paragraphs discourage readers.

With a difficult phrase, consider: removing it; if it’s going too much, split it; move it.

Compare this E B White…

I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting. 123

… to:

Ever stay up late baby-sitting for a sick porker? Believe me, you can lose a heckuva lot of shut-eye. I did this bit for three nights back in September and my better half thought I’d lost my marbles. (Just kidding, Pam!)… 124

Harold M Schmeck, Jr:

The ultimate goal is to understand the human brain—that incredible three-pound package of tissue that can imagine the farthest reaches of the universe and the ultimate core of the atom but can’t fathom its own functioning. 135

S M Ulam:

Ever since I started learning mathematics I would say that I have spent—regardless of any other activity—on the average of two to three hours a day thinking and two to three hours reading or conversing about mathematics. 145

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“A computer is like a sophisticated pencil. You don’t care how it works, but if it breaks you want someone there to fix it.” Notice how refreshing that sentence is after all the garbage that preceeded it. in its language (comfortable words), in its details that we can visualize (the pencil) and above all in its humanity. 155-6

Jean Shepherd:

The automobile also means much more to the common people of the great plains than it does to the city folk who huddle jammed together in the great urban East. I mean, and still means, freedom, mobility and, above all, a way out for lives that are often as monotonous as the landscape they are lived in. 170-1

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Criticism is a serious intellectual act. It tries to appraise serious works of art and to place them in the context of what has been done before in that medium or by that particular artist. 175

Humour as “a national asset in forcing the country to see itself clearly.” 187

“The crucial ingredient in memoir is, of course, people. Sounds and smells and sleeping porches will take you just so far…” 216

“I happen to be a slow writer, and I can’t write the second paragraph until I’ve got the first one right, or the third one until I’ve got the second one right.” 224 😂

“I realized that the material was so rich that any attempt to explain why it was rich would be patronizing. It would deprive readers of the pleasure of bringing their own emotions…” 239

” … [T]ension must be maintained between every sentence and every paragraph… Every step should seem inevitable.” 244