William Zinsser Quotes

Less is more.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

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.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

A clear sentence is no accident.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

Clutter is the disease of American writing.

Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.

Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.

There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.

Writing is a craft not an art.

You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?

If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.

The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.

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

I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.

To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.

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.

Good writers are visible just behind their words.

People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.

Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.

Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours.

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.

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.

It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon "launder" became a dirty word.

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.

The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.

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.

A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.

If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.

All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.

Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.

Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

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.

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.

Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.

Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.