On writing well

On writing well

But On Writing Well, first published in , is the one you’d find most often if you were snooping through the desks of your heroes, editorial or advertising. It takes a four-part approach: the principles (clutter, style, audience); the methods (unity, leads and endings); the forms (interviews, memoir, business writing); and, most importantly, the attitudes. Or, as Dennis Denuto would say On Writing Well by William Zinsser. My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Check the book on Amazon or, browse my Top 10 Books. The Book in One Paragraph. text here text here text. Lessons I Have Learned. Lesson #1: text here Lesson #2: text here Lesson #3: text here Lesson 5/4/ · On Writing Well, which grew out of a course that William Zinsser taught at Yale, has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity, and for the warmth of its blogger.com is a book for anybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody blogger.com: Paperback

'On Writing Well' Book Notes [ Detailed ]

A lifelong nonfiction writer, on writing well, William began his career as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune in In the s, he taught a writing class at Yale University.

He also wrote 18 books in a writing career spanning more than half a century. I decided to exclude them because those sub-chapters focussed on how to write a specific kind of genre, on writing well.

For example, the excluded sub-chapters were about writing about people, writing about places, writing about yourself, etc, on writing well. The notes are lengthy but dense in insights. The words, after all, come from a master of the craft. Some people write by day, on writing well by night, on writing well. Some people on writing well silence, others turn on the radio, on writing well.

Some write by hand, some by word processor, some by talking into a tape recorder. But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense. They sit down to commit an act of literature, and the self who emerges on paper is far stiffer than the person who sat down to write.

The problem is to find the real man or woman behind the tension. Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.

I often find myself reading with interest about a topic I never thought would interest me—some scientific quest, perhaps. What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his field.

How was he drawn into it? What emotional baggage did he bring along? How did it change his life? Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important. The sentence is too simple—there must be something wrong with it. Thinking clearly is a conscious act that writers must force on themselves, as if they were working on any other project that requires logic: making a shopping list or doing an algebra problem.

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. Is there any way to recognize clutter at a glance? Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly.

Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any on writing well be expressed with more economy?

Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Simplify, simplify. You have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up. You must know what the essential tools are and what job they were designed to do. If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart, on writing well. First, learn to hammer the nails, and if what you build is sturdy and serviceable, take satisfaction in its plain strength.

There is no style store; style is organic to the person doing the writing, on writing well much a part of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of it. Trying to add style is like adding a toupee, on writing well. At first glance the formerly bald man looks young and even handsome. This is the problem of writers who set out deliberately to garnish their prose.

You lose whatever it is that makes you unique. The reader will notice if you are putting on airs. Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself. No rule, however, is harder to follow. It requires writers to do two things on writing well by their metabolism are impossible.

They must relax, and they must have confidence. Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being examined for a hernia, and as for confidence, see how stiffly he sits, glaring at the screen that awaits his words. See how often he gets up to look for something to eat or drink. A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.

A person! Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper on writing well, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity. There is no such audience—every reader is a different on writing well. If they doze off in the middle of your article because you have been careless about a technical detail, the fault is yours.

Notice the decisions that other writers make in their choice of words and be finicky about the ones you select from the vast supply. The race in writing is not to the swift but to the original, on writing well. The Thesaurus is to the writer what a rhyming dictionary is to the songwriter—a reminder of all the choices.

This on writing well seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize. Therefore such matters as rhythm and alliteration are vital to every sentence. Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write. I write entirely by ear and read everything aloud before letting it go out into the world.

An occasional short sentence can carry a tremendous punch. Learn on writing well use them with originality and care. And also remember: somebody out there is listening. Unity is the anchor of good writing. So, first, get your unities straight. Therefore choose from among the many variables and stick to your choice. One choice is unity of pronoun. Are you going to on writing well in the first person, on writing well, as a participant, or in the third person, as an observer?

Or even in the second person. Unity of tense is another choice. You must choose the tense in which you are principally going to address the reader, no matter how many glances you may take backward or forward along the way.

Another choice is unity of mood. You might want to talk to the reader in the casual voice that The New Yorker has strenuously refined. Or you might want to approach the reader with a certain formality to describe a serious event or to present a set of important facts. Both tones are acceptable. In fact, any tone is acceptable. Writing is no respecter of blueprints.

Just remember that all the unities must be fitted into the edifice you finally put together, however backwardly they may be assembled, or it will soon come tumbling down.

The most important sentence in any article is the first one. Some leads hook the reader with just a few well-baited sentences; others amble on for several pages, exerting a slow but steady pull. At some point you must stop researching and start writing. Look for your material everywhere, not just by reading the obvious sources and interviewing the obvious people.

Knowing when to end an article is far more important than most writers realize. You should give as much thought to choosing your last sentence as you did to your first. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

A good last sentence—or last paragraph—is a joy in itself. It gives the reader a lift, and it lingers when the article is over. This is a chapter of scraps and morsels—small admonitions on many points that I have collected under one, as they say, umbrella.

Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer. Make active verbs activate your sentences, and try to avoid the kind that need on writing well appended preposition to complete their work.

Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired?

On Writing Well Tutorial

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On Writing Well - William Zinsser (Book Summary)

But On Writing Well, first published in , is the one you’d find most often if you were snooping through the desks of your heroes, editorial or advertising. It takes a four-part approach: the principles (clutter, style, audience); the methods (unity, leads and endings); the forms (interviews, memoir, business writing); and, most importantly, the attitudes. Or, as Dennis Denuto would say On Writing Well by William Zinsser. My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Check the book on Amazon or, browse my Top 10 Books. The Book in One Paragraph. text here text here text. Lessons I Have Learned. Lesson #1: text here Lesson #2: text here Lesson #3: text here Lesson writing well. That condition was first revealed with the arrival of the word processor. Two opposite things happened: good writers got better and bad writers got worse. Good writers welcomed the gift of being able to fuss endlessly with their sentences—pruning and revising and reshaping—without the drudgery of retyping. Bad writers became even more verbose because writing was suddenly so File Size: 1MB