William Zinsser famous quotes

Writing is thinking on paper.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Thinking #Paper

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. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Hard Work #People

Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
-- William Zinsser

#Confused #Writing #Tired

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

#Writing #People #Ego

Writing is a craft not an art.
-- William Zinsser

#Inspirational #Art #Writing

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

#Writing #Alive

A clear sentence is no accident.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Clear #Sentences

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

#Jobs #People #Want

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

#Writing #Numbers #Way

Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
-- William Zinsser

#Be Kind #Kind

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

#Subjects

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

#Writing #Thinking #Soul

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

#Writing #Thinking #Clear

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

#Writing

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

#Thinking #Fine Things #Ends

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

#Enough #Said #Periods

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

#Writing #Simplicity #Humanity

Good writers are visible just behind their words.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Behinds

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

#Writing #People #Hardest

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
-- William Zinsser

#Reading #Writing #Easy

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

#Country #Writing #Thinking

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

#Writing #Jargon #Disease

Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.
-- William Zinsser

#Believe #Writing #Emotional

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

#Writing #Essence #Games

Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.
-- William Zinsser

#Believe #Writing #Ego

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components,
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Secret #Good Writing

Be grateful for every word you can cut.
-- William Zinsser

#Grateful #Writing #Cutting

Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Ratios #Direct

There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
-- William Zinsser

#Inspirational #Eye #Too Short

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.
-- William Zinsser

#Errors #Marketing #Vagueness

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.
-- William Zinsser

#Teacher #Writing #Thinking

If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
-- William Zinsser

#Needs #Painful

Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Blueprints

It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, "launder" became a dirty word.
-- William Zinsser

#Dirty #Irony #Fitting

Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.
-- William Zinsser

#Want #Stories #Emotion

Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
-- William Zinsser

#Motivation #Faster

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

#Writing #Shapes #Narrative

Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
-- William Zinsser

#Interesting #Humanity #Ordinary

Editors are licensed to be curious.
-- William Zinsser

#Editors #Curious

No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief
-- William Zinsser

#Running #Writing #People

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

#Moving #Style #Narrative

Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.
-- William Zinsser

#Fall #Writing #Sky

Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Artist #Piano

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

#Editors #Want #Strive

Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.
-- William Zinsser

#Mom #Dog #Apples

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
-- William Zinsser

#Mistake #Corporations #Language

Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso; they needed models. This is especially true of writing.
-- William Zinsser

#Art #Spring #Writing

People read with their ears, whether they know it or not,
-- William Zinsser

#People #Ears

Clutter is the disease of American writing,
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Disease #Clutter

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
-- William Zinsser

#Believe #Writing #Want

My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Simplicity #Humanity

My commodity as a writer, whatever I'm writing about, is me. And your commodity is you. Don't alter your voice to fit the subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that's enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Voice #Musical

Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
-- William Zinsser

#Trying #Today #Routine

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

#Numbers #Paper #Purpose

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

#Trying #Different #Mass

Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
-- William Zinsser

#Want #What You Want

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

#Writing #Voice #Quality

Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Thinking #Paper

Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with "but." If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Stronger #Gone

Good writing is lean and confident.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Good Writing

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

#Reading #Cutting #Trying

Thought is action in rehearsal.
-- William Zinsser

#Thinking #Rehearsal #Action

You learn to write by writing.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing

A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
-- William Zinsser

#Hard Work #Writing #Simple

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

#Teaching #Writing #Care

You'll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want
-- William Zinsser

#Strong #Roots #Curiosity

Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
-- William Zinsser

#Language #Scholarship #Fury

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Long #Secret

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.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Want #Helping

Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.
-- William Zinsser

#Moving #Emotional #Pieces

Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Thinking #Trying

Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
-- William Zinsser

#Successful #Two #Mind

Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind,
-- William Zinsser

#Weed #Fighting #Clutter

What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
-- William Zinsser

#Work #Laughing #People

Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.
-- William Zinsser

#Memories #Writing #Thinking

Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Thinking #Process

A writer is always working.
-- William Zinsser

#Writing

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

#Writing #Doe #Needs

Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing; it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
-- William Zinsser

#Writing #Thinking #Doe