on writing zinsser

• Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Return this item for free

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction Paperback – April 5, 2016

Purchase options and add-ons.

On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet.

Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

• Part of series On Writing Well
• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publication date April 5, 2016
• Reading age 15 - 18 years
• Dimensions 0.76 x 5.31 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 9780060891541
• ISBN-13 978-0060891541
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Get to know this book

What's it about.

Popular highlight

Editorial reviews.

“ On Writing Well belongs on any shelf of serious reference works for writers.” — New York Times

“Not since The Elements of Style has there been a guide to writing as well presented and readable as this one. A love and respect for the language is evident on every page.” — Library Journal

About the Author

William Zinsser is a writer, editor and teacher. He began his career on the New York Herald Tribune and has since written regularly for leading magazines. During the 1970s he was master of Branford College at Yale. His 17 books, ranging from baseball to music to American travel, include the influential Writing to Learn and Writing About Your Life . He teaches at the New School in New York.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On writing well, 30th anniversary edition, harpercollins publishers, inc., chapter one, the transaction.

A school in Connecticut once held "a day devoted to the arts," and I was asked if I would come and talk about writing as a vocation. When I arrived I found that a second speaker had been invited -- Dr. Brock (as I'll call him), a surgeon who had recently begun to write and had sold some stories to magazines. He was going to talk about writing as an avocation. That made us a panel, and we sat down to face a crowd of students and teachers and parents, all eager to learn the secrets of our glamorous work.

Dr. Brock was dressed in a bright red jacket, looking vaguely bohemian, as authors are supposed to look, and the first question went to him. What was it like to be a writer?

He said it was tremendous fun. Coming home from an arduous day at the hospital, he would go straight to his yellow pad and write his tensions away. The words just flowed. It was easy. I then said that writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.

Next Dr. Brock was asked if it was important to rewrite. Absolutely not, he said. "Let it all hang out," he told us, and whatever form the sentences take will reflect the writer at his most natural. I then said that rewriting is the essence of writing. I pointed out that professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten.

"What do you do on days when it isn't going well?" Dr. Brock was asked. He said he just stopped writing and put the work aside for a day when it would go better. I then said that the professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke.

"What if you're feeling depressed or unhappy?" a student asked. "Won't that affect your writing?"

Probably it will, Dr. Brock replied. Go fishing. Take a walk. Probably it won't, I said. If your job is to write every day, you learn to do it like any other job.

A student asked if we found it useful to circulate in the literary world. Dr. Brock said he was greatly enjoying his new life as a man of letters, and he told several stories of being taken to lunch by his publisher and his agent at Manhattan restaurants where writers and editors gather. I said that professional writers are solitary drudges who seldom see other writers.

"Do you put symbolism in your writing?" a student asked me.

"Not if I can help it," I replied. I have an unbroken record of missing the deeper meaning in any story, play or movie, and as for dance and mime, I have never had any idea of what is being conveyed.

"I love symbols!" Dr. Brock exclaimed, and he described with gusto the joys of weaving them through his work.

So the morning went, and it was a revelation to all of us. At the end Dr. Brock told me he was enormously interested in my answers -- it had never occurred to him that writing could be hard. I told him I was just as interested in his answers -- it had never occurred to me that writing could be easy. Maybe I should take up surgery on the side.

As for the students, anyone might think we left them bewildered. But in fact we gave them a broader glimpse of the writing process than if only one of us had talked. For there isn't any "right" way to do such personal work. 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. Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by word processor, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and then revise; others can't write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first.

But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense. They are driven by a compulsion to put some part of themselves on paper, and yet they don't just write what comes naturally. 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? It's not necessary to want to spend a year alone at Walden Pond to become involved with a writer who did.

This is the personal transaction that's at the heart of good nonfiction writing. Out of it come two of the most important qualities that this book will go in search of humanity and warmth. 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. It's a question of using the English language in a way that it will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.

Can such principles be taught? Maybe not. But most of them can be learned.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0060891548
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; Anniversary,Reprint edition (April 5, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780060891541
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060891541
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 15 - 18 years
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.76 x 5.31 x 8 inches
• #1 in Rhetoric (Books)
• #1 in Writing Skill Reference (Books)
• #1 in Fiction Writing Reference (Books)

Videos for this product

Click to play video

BookThinkers Unboxing Video

Nick Hutchison

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Amazon Videos

The best book on writing

LENGDUNG TUNGCHAMMA

About the author

William zinsser.

William Zinsser, a writer, editor, and teacher, is a fourth-generation New Yorker, born in 1922. His 18 books, which range in subject from music to baseball to American travel, include several widely read books about writing.

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, first published in 1976, has sold almost 1.5 million copies to three generations of writers, editors, journalists, teachers and students.

Writing to Learn which uses examples of good writing in science, medicine and technology to demonstrate that writing is a powerful component of learning in every subject.

Writing Places, a memoir recalling the enjoyment and gratitude the places where William Zinsser has done his writing and his teaching and the unusual people he encountered on that life journey.

Mr. Zinsser began his career in 1946 at the New York Herald Tribune, where he was a writer, editor, and critic. In 1959 he left to become a freelance writer and has since written regularly for leading magazines. From 1968 to 1972 he was a columnist for Life. During the 1970s he was at Yale, where, besides teaching nonfiction writing and humor writing, he was master of Branford College. In 1979 he returned to New York and was a senior editor at the Book-of-the-Month Club until 1987, when he went back to freelance writing. He teaches at the New School and at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is an adviser on writing to schools, colleges, and other organizations. He holds honorary degrees from Wesleyan University, Rollins College, and the University of Southern Indian and is a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.

William Zinsser's other books include Mitchell & Ruff, a profile of jazz musicians Dwike Mitchell and Willie Ruff; American Places, a pilgrimage to 16 iconic American sites; Spring Training, about the spring training camp of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1988; and Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs; and he is the Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. A jazz pianist and songwriter, he wrote a musical revue, What's the Point, which was performed off Broadway in 2003.

Mr. Zinsser lives in his home town with his wife, the educator and historian Caroline Zinsser. They have two children, Amy Zinsser, a business executive, and John Zinsser, a painter and teacher.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

About | Essays | Notes | Newsletter | Book Lists

• Scholarships

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

Reading Time: 12 minutes

William Zinsser’s On Writing Well is the most practical guide around if you want to learn how to write better nonfiction. With a cheeky tone and demonstrated command of the craft, Zinsser shares timeless lessons and techniques for leveling up your writing game. This is one of the few books about writing that I’ve re-read over the years.

Buy this book on Amazon (Must read)

Access My Searchable Collection of 100+ Book Notes

Key Takeaways

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

• Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn’t be there.
• Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose.
• The adjective “personal” is almost never necessary. Sentences are clear without it.
• Say “now” or “today” instead of “currently” or “at this time.” It’s simpler.
• It is raining” is better than “At the present time we are experiencing precipitation.”
• “Experiencing” can be eliminated. It’s always clutter.
• Clutter is the ponderous euphemism that turns a slum into a depressed socioeconomic area, garbage collectors into waste-disposal personnel and the town dump into the volume reduction unit.
• Clutter is political correctness gone amok.
• “invasion” is better than “reinforced protective reaction strike.”
• “Verbal camouflage” is used by corporations and politicians to hide their mistakes.
• “Clutter is the enemy. “Beware, then, of the long word that’s no better than the short word:” “assistance” (help), “numerous” (many), “facilitate” (ease), “individual” (man or woman), “remainder” (rest), “initial” (first), “implement” (do), “sufficient” (enough), “attempt” (try), “referred to as” (called).
• Put brackets around every component in a piece of writing that isn’t useful: “order up”, “smile happily” “tall skyscraper” “a bit” “sort of” “in a sense”). “Sometimes brackets surrounded an entire sentence – the one that essentially repeats what the previous sentence said, or that says something readers don’t need to know or can figure out for themselves.

”But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.”

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. Always ask, “what am I trying to say?” and “have I said it?” Anything else is “fuzz.”

• “You have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up.” Add style after you have the principles of clear writing down.
• There is no style store; style is organic to the person doing the writing, as much a part of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of it.
• Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.
• You often start sounding normal after the first three or four paragraphs and can throw everything away up until that point.
• Good writers are visible just behind their words.
• Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.

The Audience

• The answer to “Who am I writing for?” is “You are writing for yourself.” You don’t write for the reader. You first master the tools of writing so that a reader does not get bored. Then you find ways to express yourself with the creative quirks natural to you. If the reader likes that, great, If not, great.
• Never say anything in writing in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. If you’re not a person who says “indeed” or “moreover,” or who calls someone an individual (”he’s a fine individual”), please don’t write it.
• Any writer who uses “ain’t” and “tendentious” in the same sentence, who quotes without using quotation marks, knows what he’s doing.
• Words are the only tool a writer has. They should be treated with care.
• “Writing is learned by imitation.” – Figure out how great writers do what they do.
• Pay attention to how words sound. Good writing has rhythm.
• “Serene” and “tranquil” have similar meanings, but one is soft while they other is course.
• When your writing runs at the same pace and becomes dull: See if you can gain variety by reversing the order of a sentence, or by substituting a word that has freshness or oddity, or by altering the length of your sentences so they don’t all sound as if they came out of the same machine. An occasional short sentence can carry a tremendous punch.
• Language is a fabric that changes from one week to another. The laws of usage are relative, bending with the taste of the lawmaker.
• I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
• Don’t use myself; it’s prissy.
• “too” is not a synonym for “very”, but more appropriate with humor. “He didn’t feel too much like going shopping” vs. “He was not too happy when she ignored him.”
• “infer” doesn’t mean “imply”
• “reference” is not “allusion”
• “Connive” is not “conspire”
• “compare with” is not “compare to”
• “comprise” means include
• Don’t use “into” (She’s into something)
• Input and feedback can be replaced with “my ideas” and “what he thinks”
• You learn to write by writing.
• All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
• Unity of pronoun: First person, third person, etc.
• Unity of tense: Write principally in one tense to the reader, with room for switching between them.
• Unity of mood: Don’t bounce around to many personalities, a failure of most travel writing. Sticking to a conversational tone, can eliminate a bouncing back between an excited traveler, a brochure writer, and a medical practitioner in describing certain details
• Leave the reader with one provocative thought he or she did not have before

Writing About Places: The Travel Article

• You’ll need to evoke the mood of a whole neighborhood or town to give texture to the story you’re telling. That’s built on the descriptive detail.
• Readers don’t want to hear everything that happened. They only want to hear some. “What made his trip different from everybody else’s? What can he tell us that we don’t already know?”
• The details you select must be significant. Don’t get lost in all of the ways you were touched by new sights and sounds or catch up in groaning platitudes. “The city has its own attractiveness,” means nothing.
• The key is to first choose your words with unusual care. Then, be intensely selective with the details. Saying that a sea had waves or the sand was white is obvious. Find details that are significant and that help bring shape to your narrative.
• “This is the California where it is easy to Dial-A-Devotion; but hard to buy a book…The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past.”
• You need to find the central idea of the place you’re writing about. For example, Rio is a city that evoked feelings within me, bringing me away from the logic that drove my life. That’s what makes it special, not that it has a nice landscape.
• Don’t write about what you extract from a place, but rather what a place extracts from you. What are the new sights or experiences that “touch off thoughts that otherwise wouldn’t have entered the writer’s mind.”
• If travel is broadening, it should broaden more than just our knowledge of how a Gothic cathedral looks or how the French make wine. It should generate a whole constellation of ideas about how men and women work and play, raise their children, worship their gods, live and die.
• The church was very exciting. It took a long time for me to disengage myself from this excitement, and on the blindest, most visceral level, I never really have, and never will.
• Ask yourself what kind of quest people who visit a particular place are on.

Writing About Places: The Memoir

• Write about what you know and what you think.
• If you write for yourself, you’ll reach the people you want to write for.
• Make sure every component in your memoir is doing useful work. Write about yourself, by all means, with confidence and with pleasure. But see that all the details – people, places, events, anecdotes, ideas, emotions – are moving your story steadily along.
• Be narrow in your focus. “Unlike autobiography, which spans an entire life, memoir assumes the life and ignores most of it.” “Memoir isn’t the summary of life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition.”
• Memoir is the art of investing the truth.
• The most interesting character in the memoir should be the person who wrote it.
• When writing about yourself, make sure you have a good time doing it.

The Lead and the Ending

• The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead.
• Readers want to know early on what’s in it for them. You need to hook them. That hook can be a few sentences, or a slow build.
• “when I found his bark I studied it as intently as if I had come upon the Rosetta Stone.”
• Always collect more material than you can use. Then use the most interesting bits.
• You should give as much thought to choosing your last sentence as you did to your first. Well, almost as much. A bad closing ruins an otherwise good article. The positive reason for ending well is that 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.
• One way to end is to bring the story full circle. Don’t say “In conclusion,” Bring a natural closing point that has some element of surprise or a desire to learn more. A quirky quote is a good way to leave the reader thinking.

Bits & Pieces

• Use active verbs. Passive constructions sap the reader’s energy and leave doubt. “Joe saw him” > “He was seen by Joe”
• Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully.
• Don’t “set up” a business that you can “start” or “launch.”
• Use precise verbs. If you say “the president stepped down,” we don’t know what happened. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired?

Most adverbs are unnecessary. Redundant adverbs weaken strong verbs. “effortlessly easy”, “totally flabbergasted” “clenching teeth tightly” “slightly spartan” – all of these weaken the verbs.

• Most adjectives are also unnecessary. The concept is often already described in the noun. “precipitous cliffs” and “lacy spiderwebs” “yellow daffodils” or “brownish dirt”
• Adjectives are used for flavor, but they make sentences unreadably long.
• Using adjectives more sparsely will give them more weight. “He looked at the gray sky and the black clouds and decided to sail back to the harbor.” the colors are the reason for the decision, so they’re helpful.

Little qualifiers

• Eliminate small qualifiers. “a bit” “a little” “sort of” “kind of” “rather” “quite” “very” “too” “pretty much” “in a sense”. “They dilute your style and your persuasiveness.”
• “And yet, on balance, affirmative action has, I think, been a qualified success.” – 5 hedging words in one sentence.
• Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
• Qualifiers diminish the reader’s trust by making you seem like you don’t believe in yourself.

Punctuation

• The period. Make sentences shorter. Long sentences can be broken down into shorter ones.
• Exclamation point. Don’t use it unless you must.
• The semicolon. Use it sparingly as it brings the reader to a hault.
• The dash. Use the dash in one of two ways. “One is to amplify or justify in the second part of the sentence a thought you stated in the first part.” “We decided to keep going – it was only 100 miles more and we could get there before dinner.” The other way is to use two dashes that set apart a parenthetical thought within a longer sentence. “She told me to get in the car – she had been after me all summer to have a haircut – and we drove silently into town.”
• The colon. Use it basically for introducing an itemized list.

Mood changers

• “Learn to alert the reader as soon as possible to any change in mood from the previous sentence.” – “But” “yet” “however” “still” “instead” “now” “later” and others can do the job. “But” is particularly good for announcing a transition. If you need to use another word, however, “however” will work well if put in the middle of a sentence. You can use these words to replace long sentences that repeat information. “Despite the fact that all these dangers had been pointed out to him” can be “Yet he decided to go.”
• You also want to make sure readers are oriented with time. “Meanwhile” “now” “today” and “later” can help

Contractions

Using them can make sentences less stiff than others. But avoid the “I’d” “he’d” “we’d” variety as they can mean I had and I would. Don’t invent new contractions like “could’ve”

• “When you use a quotation, start the sentence with it. Don’t lead up to it with a vapid phrase saying what the man said.
• BAD: Mr. Smith said that he liked to “go downtown once a week and have lunch with some of my old friends.”
• GOOD: “I usually like to go downtown once a week,” Mr. Smith said, “and have lunch with some of my old friends.” The second sentence has vitality, the first one is dead.
• Nothing is deader than to start a sentence with a “Mr. Smith said” construction—it’s where many readers stop reading. If the man said it, let him say it and get the sentence off to a warm, human start. But be careful where you break the quotation. Do it as soon as you naturally can, so that the reader knows who is talking, but not where the break will destroy the rhythm or the meaning.”

That and which

Use “that,” except for when the sentence needs a comma to achieve its precise meaning. Then you can use “which.” The house, which has a red roof.

Overstatement

Avoid overstatement. You lose credibility and bore a reader. A mess after a party should not be described as “it looked like an atomic bomb had gone off.”

Writing is hard

”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.”

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

Surprise is the most refreshing element in nonfiction writing.

If you’re going to dictate, consider that these sentences tend to be pompous, sloppy, and redundant. You’ll need to do heavy editing to make them work.

The Quickest Fix

If you’re stuck on a sentence, the solution may be to eliminate it. If no rewriting works, ask “Do I need it at all?”

Writing is visual – it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. Thinking in paragraphs, especially short ones, can help. Don’t make them so short as to insult the reader.

• Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost.
• When you read your writing aloud with these connecting links in mind you’ll hear a dismaying number of places where you lost the reader, or confused the reader, or failed to tell him the one fact he needed to know, or told him the same thing twice.

Trust Your Material

Trust the reader to draw conclusions. They need space to think for themselves. “Don’t annoy your readers by over-explaining – by telling them something they already know or can figure out.”

One provocative thought

”…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.”

The Sound of Your Voice

• Don’t try to be “breezy” or easy-going. This often leads to “cheap slang, shoddy sentences, windy philosophizing.”
• Cliches are the enemy of taste. They bore the reader.
• My other question raised a more subtle mystery: what is the line that separates eloquence from bombast?

Enjoyment, Fear, and Confidence

• If you’re having fun while writing, so will some of the readers. Just like an actor going on stage, you have to turn on the switch, even when you’re not up for it.
• I’ve used writing to give myself an interesting life and a continuing education. Writing is a tool to keep you interested in living. “Learning is a tonic.” It’s a ticket to an interesting life.

The Tyranny of the Final Product

• We are a culture that worships the winning result…less glamorous gains made along the way — learning, wisdom, growth, confidence, dealing with failure — aren’t given the same respect because they can’t be given a grade.” There’s value beyond being paid or finishing something. The process is valuable.
• Americans get squeamish at any mention of religion.
• But even if it never gets published,” he said, “I’m glad I did it.”

A Writer’s Decisions

• Organizing your piece is just as important as writing clear and pleasing sentences. Even wonderful sentences fall apart “if you don’t keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative — good old-fashioned storytelling — is what should pull your readers along without noticing the tug.”
• A city with streets of sand is a city at the edge.
• Before writing the next sentence, ask your readers: What do they want to know next?
• In travel writing you should never forget that you are the guide. It’s not enough just to take your readers on a trip; you must take them on your trip. Make them identify with you — with your hopes and apprehensions.
• Used in moderations, making yourself gullible — or downright stupid — gives the reader the enormous pleasure of feeling superior.
• The real climax of the story was not finding the salt caravan; it was finding the timeless hospitality of the people who live in the Sahara.
• “Get on the plane.” is a useful metaphor for exploring your curiosity and seeing where it leads.

Writing Family History and Memoir

• Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its satisfactions is to come to terms with your life narrative. Another is to work through some of life’s hardest knocks —loss, grief, illness, addiction, disappointment, failure—and to find understanding and solace.
• Her drive to fulfill the broken dreams of her marriage never faltered. But she had the German penchant for telling people off, and she died alone at 81, having scolded away all her friends.
• That was my remembered truth, and that’s how I wrote it.
• Should you write from the point of view of the child you once were or the adult you are now? Both options lead to powerful memoirs, but you need to choose one.
• What about the privacy of the people I write about? Don’t worry about that problem in advance.
• Don’t air all of your old grievances in your writing. Don’t reveal too much. It’s more powerful to share the good and bad times, while showing how you remained strong and avoided resentment.”
• Think small. Don’t try to include every important event or detail of your life. Narrow in on a subset of stories that reveal who you are and what that means. “I never felt that my memoir had to include all the important things that ever happened to me—a common temptation when old people sit down to summarize their life journey.”
• Think about how a story conveys a universal truth. A reader may not care about your particular favorite childhood toy, but everyone has had a favorite toy and can relate to that. “Remember: Your biggest stories often have less to do with their subject than with their significance—not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.”

Write as Well as You Can

• Try to write as entertainingly as possible. “Any number of devices will do the job: humor, anecdote, paradox, an unexpected quotation, a powerful fact, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words.”
• If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else.
• Editors can harm your work in two ways: altering style and altering content. Don’t let them do that. “Clarity is what every editor owes the reader.”

Writing About People

Don’t strain to find synonyms for “he said.” It’s fine to use them to convey the shifting nature of a conversation. “He pointed out,” “he explained” “he replied,” “he added”

If you want to discover more great books...

• Explore the best books for expanding your mind, the best self-help books, the best philosophy books for beginners, books for people who don't enjoy reading, and more great books .
• Check out Foundations. Foundations is a searchable digital notebook built for curious, lifelong learners. It will help you accelerate your learning, solve hard problems, and save time by giving you access to a growing digital collection of insights from timeless books.

You might also enjoy these books...

• Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin: Summary & Notes
• Do the Work by Steven Pressfield
• Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield
• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull
• Reinvent Yourself by James Altucher
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

If you want the latest book notes in your inbox...

On Writing Well

William zinsser, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Zinsser's On Writing Well . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

On Writing Well: Introduction

On writing well: plot summary, on writing well: detailed summary & analysis, on writing well: themes, on writing well: quotes, on writing well: characters, on writing well: terms, on writing well: symbols, on writing well: theme wheel, brief biography of william zinsser.

Historical Context of On Writing Well

Other books related to on writing well.

• Full Title: On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
• When Written: June–August 1975
• Where Written: Niantic, Connecticut
• When Published: 1976 (1st ed.); 1980 (2nd ed.); 1985 (3rd ed.); 1990 (4th ed.); 1994 (5th ed.); 1998 (6th ed.); 2001 (25th Anniversary ed.); 2006 (30th Anniversary ed.)
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: Nonfiction
• Point of View: First Person

Extra Credit for On Writing Well

What’s in a Name. Zinsser originally wanted to call his book Writing Well . But his editor, Buz Wyeth, noted that the poet Donald Hall had already published a book by that name, so he suggested that Zinsser add “On” to the title.

Careful Quoting. In On Writing Well , Zinsser had to cut most excerpts from other writers’ work to 300 words in order to stay within “fair use” rules (and avoid paying most of his book’s profits in royalties). However, he actually appreciated this limit, because it forced him to guide his readers through other writers’ work, rather than just turning his book into an anthology of their work.

• Even more »

Account Options

• Try the new Google Books
• Advanced Book Search
• Barnes&Noble.com
• Books-A-Million
• Find in a library
• All sellers  »

Get Textbooks on Google Play

Rent and save from the world's largest eBookstore. Read, highlight, and take notes, across web, tablet, and phone.

Go to Google Play Now »

Other editions - View all

References to this book, about the author  (2006).

William Zinsser has been a mentor for countless people who want to write with clarity and confidence. His eighteen books include the classic On Writing Well , which has sold almost 1.5 million copies. He now teaches at the New School and at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Bibliographic information

The best free cultural &

educational media on the web

• Online Courses
• Certificates
• Degrees & Mini-Degrees
• Audio Books

10 Writing Tips from Legendary Writing Teacher William Zinsser

in Writing | May 13th, 2015 6 Comments

Image used with per­mis­sion by Mark Ostow/Yale Alum­ni Mag­a­zine

Author William Zinss­er died at his Man­hat­tan home on Tues­day, May 12, 2015. The 92-year-old left behind one of the clas­sics of writ­ing instruc­tion man­u­als as his lega­cy, On Writ­ing Well . Since its first print­ing in 1976, the book has sold 1.5 mil­lion copies, and Zinss­er made sure to update the book often. He loved the rev­o­lu­tion in writ­ing that com­put­ers brought, call­ing it a mir­a­cle.

Nev­er have so many Amer­i­cans writ­ten so pro­fuse­ly and with so few inhi­bi­tions. Which means that it wasn’t a cog­ni­tive prob­lem after all. It was a cul­tur­al prob­lem, root­ed in that old buga­boo of Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion: fear.

Zinss­er stressed sim­plic­i­ty and effi­cien­cy, but also style and enthu­si­asm. Here are 10 of his many tips for improv­ing your writ­ing.

1. Don’t make lazy word choic­es: “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.”

2. On the oth­er hand, avoid jar­gon and big words: “Clear think­ing becomes clear writ­ing; one can’t exist with­out the oth­er. It’s impos­si­ble for a mud­dy thinker to write good Eng­lish.”

3. 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.”

4. Write in the first per­son: “Writ­ing is an inti­mate trans­ac­tion between two peo­ple, con­duct­ed on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its human­i­ty.”

5. And the more you keep in first per­son and true to your­self, the soon­er you will find your style: “Sell your­self, and your sub­ject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own iden­ti­ty and your own opin­ions. Writ­ing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.

6. Don’t ask who your audi­ence is…you are the audi­ence: “You are writ­ing pri­mar­i­ly to please your­self, and if you go about it with enjoy­ment you will also enter­tain the read­ers who are worth writ­ing for.”

7. Study the mas­ters but also your con­tem­po­raries: “Writ­ing is learned by imi­ta­tion. If any­one asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by read­ing the men and women who were doing the kind of writ­ing I want­ed to do and try­ing to fig­ure out how they did it.”

8. Yes, the the­saurus is your friend: “The The­saurus is to the writer what a rhyming dic­tio­nary is to the songwriter–a reminder of all the choices–and you should use it with grat­i­tude. If, hav­ing found the scalawag and the scape­grace, you want to know how they dif­fer, then go to the dic­tio­nary.”

9. Read every­thing you write out loud for rhythm and sound: “Good writ­ers of prose must be part poet, always lis­ten­ing to what they write.”

10. And don’t ever believe you are going to write any­thing defin­i­tive: “Decide what cor­ner of your sub­ject you’re going to bite off, and be con­tent to cov­er it well and stop.”

Zinss­er fol­lows his own advice, in that this book ( pick up a copy here ) is a joy to read, with a rol­lick­ing humor and an infec­tious enthu­si­asm. May he rest in peace!

Final­ly, as some­one who can’t stand to hear the word ‘unique’ mod­i­fied, Zinss­er has this to say: “…being ‘rather unique’ is no more pos­si­ble than being rather preg­nant.’”

Relat­ed Con­tent

David Ogilvy’s 1982 Memo “How to Write” Offers 10 Pieces of Time­less Advice

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast . You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills , read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here .

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Comments (6) |

Related posts:

Comments (6), 6 comments so far.

Draw­ing specif­i­cal­ly from the expe­ri­ence of see­ing my recent­ly chris­tened moth­er of a friend bare­ly show­ing at 2 months then keep-your-overnight-bag-ready at 8.5 months, I’d argue that being “rather preg­nant” is pos­si­ble.

And what to say of “unique”? Today’s via­bil­i­ty of “rather unique” fol­lows from a dilu­tion of the mean­ing of “unique”. The word has been used so much that it has acquired gra­da­tions.

Thanks for the great post. I’ve actu­al­ly just hit a wall in my cur­rent writ­ing project, and these points are refresh­ing. They’ve def­i­nite­ly inspired me to get back to it. I’ll be order­ing Zinsser’s book as wel. May he rest in peace.

I am sad to hear the William Zinss­er has died. My copy of “On Writ­ing Well” dates back more than two decades. I often re-read sec­tions for inspi­ra­tion and to expe­ri­ence once again the humor with which he deliv­ers advice. I was a sci­ence writer and edi­tor for three decades and often rec­om­mend­ed “On Writ­ing Well” (and Strunk and White’s “The Ele­ments of Style”) to writ­ers work­ing for me. Both are clas­sics that will nev­er go out of style.

Good expla­na­tion

This book pro­vides the clar­i­ty, sim­plic­i­ty, brevi­ty, and human­i­ty that must be inte­grat­ed into all busi­ness writ­ing. I intro­duce this book to all of my grad­u­ate stu­dents.

Mau­reen Macken­zie, Dean Divi­sion of Busi­ness Mol­loy Col­lege

This arti­cle helps to under­stand the way my audi­ence can think about my con­tent so this way of think­ing can help a writer to write a good piece of con­tent that can attract the read­er. I believe that if a writer can think like his audi­ence than the con­tent or sto­ry will be mind­blow­ing for the read­ers. Thanks for the tips and keep shar­ing.

Good morn­ing!

Every writer, in my opin­ion, should know and use these terms when writ­ing. Your writ­ing skills, as well as the way you present your sen­tences, are out­stand­ing. Now I’m intrigued as to where you get your great writ­ing con­tent ideas. For the time being, may I pro­ceed in the same man­ner as you?

Last­ly, Man, you’ve writ­ten a fan­tas­tic arti­cle. Con­tin­ue to do a great job. WRITING TIPS

Add a comment

Leave a reply.

Name (required)

Email (required)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Click here to cancel reply.

• 1,700 Free Online Courses
• 200 Online Certificate Programs
• 100+ Online Degree & Mini-Degree Programs
• 1,150 Free Movies
• 1,000 Free Audio Books
• 150+ Best Podcasts
• 800 Free eBooks
• 200 Free Textbooks
• 300 Free Language Lessons
• 150 Free Business Courses
• Free K-12 Education
• Get Our Daily Email

Free Courses

• Art & Art History
• Classics/Ancient World
• Computer Science
• Data Science
• Engineering
• Environment
• Political Science
• Writing & Journalism
• All 1500 Free Courses
• 1000+ MOOCs & Certificate Courses

Receive our Daily Email

Free updates, get our daily email.

Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. We never spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

FOLLOW ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Free Movies

• 1150 Free Movies Online
• Free Film Noir
• Silent Films
• Documentaries
• Martial Arts/Kung Fu
• Free Hitchcock Films
• Free Charlie Chaplin
• Free John Wayne Movies
• Free Tarkovsky Films
• Free Dziga Vertov
• Free Oscar Winners
• Free Language Lessons
• All Languages

Free eBooks

• 700 Free eBooks
• Free Philosophy eBooks
• The Harvard Classics
• Philip K. Dick Stories
• Neil Gaiman Stories
• David Foster Wallace Stories & Essays
• Hemingway Stories
• Great Gatsby & Other Fitzgerald Novels
• HP Lovecraft
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Free Alice Munro Stories
• Jennifer Egan Stories
• George Saunders Stories
• Hunter S. Thompson Essays
• Joan Didion Essays
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez Stories
• David Sedaris Stories
• Stephen King
• Golden Age Comics
• Free Books by UC Press
• Life Changing Books

Free Audio Books

• 700 Free Audio Books
• Free Audio Books: Fiction
• Free Audio Books: Poetry
• Free Audio Books: Non-Fiction

Free Textbooks

• Free Physics Textbooks
• Free Computer Science Textbooks
• Free Math Textbooks

K-12 Resources

• Free Video Lessons
• Web Resources by Subject
• Quality YouTube Channels
• Teacher Resources
• All Free Kids Resources

Free Art & Images

• All Art Images & Books
• The Rijksmuseum
• Smithsonian
• The Guggenheim
• The National Gallery
• The Whitney
• LA County Museum
• Stanford University
• British Library
• Google Art Project
• French Revolution
• Getty Images
• Guggenheim Art Books
• Met Art Books
• Getty Art Books
• New York Public Library Maps
• Museum of New Zealand
• Smarthistory
• Coloring Books
• All Bach Organ Works
• All of Bach
• 80,000 Classical Music Scores
• Free Classical Music
• Live Classical Music
• 9,000 Grateful Dead Concerts
• Alan Lomax Blues & Folk Archive

Writing Tips

• William Zinsser
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Toni Morrison
• Margaret Atwood
• David Ogilvy
• Billy Wilder
• All posts by date

Personal Finance

• Open Personal Finance
• Amazon Kindle
• Architecture
• Artificial Intelligence
• Beat & Tweets
• Comics/Cartoons
• Current Affairs
• English Language
• Entrepreneurship
• Food & Drink
• Graduation Speech
• How to Learn for Free
• Internet Archive
• Language Lessons
• Most Popular
• Neuroscience
• Photography
• Pretty Much Pop
• Productivity
• UC Berkeley
• Uncategorized
• Video - Arts & Culture
• Video - Politics/Society
• Video - Science
• Video Games

Great Lectures

• Michel Foucault
• Sun Ra at UC Berkeley
• Richard Feynman
• Joseph Campbell
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Leonard Bernstein
• Richard Dawkins
• Buckminster Fuller
• Walter Kaufmann on Existentialism
• Jacques Lacan
• Roland Barthes
• Nobel Lectures by Writers
• Bertrand Russell
• Oxford Philosophy Lectures

Receive our newsletter!

Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.

Great Recordings

• T.S. Eliot Reads Waste Land
• Sylvia Plath - Ariel
• Joyce Reads Ulysses
• Joyce - Finnegans Wake
• Patti Smith Reads Virginia Woolf
• Albert Einstein
• Charles Bukowski
• Bill Murray
• Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare
• William Faulkner
• Flannery O'Connor
• Tolkien - The Hobbit
• Allen Ginsberg - Howl
• Dylan Thomas
• Anne Sexton
• John Cheever
• David Foster Wallace

Book Lists By

• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Allen Ginsberg
• Patti Smith
• Henry Miller
• Christopher Hitchens
• Joseph Brodsky
• Donald Barthelme
• David Bowie
• Samuel Beckett
• Art Garfunkel
• Marilyn Monroe
• Picks by Female Creatives
• Zadie Smith & Gary Shteyngart
• Lynda Barry

Favorite Movies

• Kurosawa's 100
• David Lynch
• Werner Herzog
• Woody Allen
• Wes Anderson
• Luis Buñuel
• Roger Ebert
• Susan Sontag
• Scorsese Foreign Films
• Philosophy Films
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• December 2022
• November 2022
• October 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• February 2022
• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• November 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• December 2018
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• February 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• November 2010
• October 2010
• September 2010
• August 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006

©2006-2024 Open Culture, LLC. All rights reserved.

• Advertise with Us
• Copyright Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use

The Art of Science Communication: William Zinsser on How to Write Well About Science

By maria popova.

Few writers have articulated the philosophies and practicalities behind this artful organization with more clarity and conviction than William Zinsser (October 7, 1922–May 12, 2015) in his 1976 classic On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction ( public library ) — a masterwork partway, in both time and tenor, between E.B. White’s vintage bible The Elements of Style and psycholinguist Steven Pinker’s contemporary counterpart The Sense of Style .

With the hindsight of three decades, Zinsser — who had written the book in the early 1970s with nothing but “a dangling lightbulb, an Underwood standard typewriter, a ream of yellow copy paper and a wire wastebasket” — reflects in the preface to the 30th anniversary edition:

Computers have replaced the typewriter, the delete key has replaced the wastebasket, and various other keys insert, move and rearrange whole chunks of text. 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.

But Zinsser points out that while the job of the writer may have gotten easier as the computer became “an everyday tool for people who had never thought of themselves as writers,” the task of the writer — that ability to say something which “other people will want to read” — has gotten, in many ways, harder:

Any invention that reduces the fear of writing is up there with air-conditioning and the lightbulb. But, as always, there’s a catch. Nobody told all the new computer writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well. […] 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 easy and their sentences looked so pretty on the screen. How could such beautiful sentences not be perfect?

Even in the decade since the 30th anniversary edition, the technological barriers of entry for writing and publishing nonfiction online have gotten exponentially lower and the stakes of good writing and journalism exponentially higher — nowhere more so than in science, where bad writing is not only unpleasurable for the reader but also potentially dangerous.

Indeed, one of the most enduring and urgently important sections of Zinsser’s classic deals with the art of writing about science — something that often befuddles both writers and scientists. The most solid common ground between them, Zinsser playfully suggests, is built upon a shared panic at the prospect of writing — with the expectation of writing well — about science. He addresses this often irrational trepidation:

Writing is not a special language owned by the English teacher. Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all. Science, demystified, is just another nonfiction subject. Writing, demystified, is just another way for scientists to transmit what they know. […] Scientific and technical material can be made accessible to the layman. It’s just a matter of putting one sentence after another. The “after,” however, is crucial. Nowhere else must you work so hard to write sentences that form a linear sequence. This is no place for fanciful leaps or implied truths. Fact and deduction are the ruling family.

To illustrate the importance of this sequential storytelling, Zinsser cites a science assignment he often gives to his writing students — the seemingly simple exercise of describing how something works: “how a sewing machine does what it does, or how a pump operates, or why an apple falls down, or how the eye tells the brain what it sees.” Reflecting on how this assignment plants the seed for good science writing, Zinsser touches on the essential function of writing as a tool for organizing reality:

Describing how a process works is valuable for two reasons. It forces you to make sure you know how it works. Then it forces you to take the reader through the same sequence of ideas and deductions that made the process clear to you. I’ve found it to be a breakthrough for many students whose thinking was disorderly.

This principle of science writing, Zinsser points out, applies to all nonfiction writing, for it teaches the writer to lead the reader, step by step, from knowing nothing about a subject to understanding enough to grow enchanted with its broader significance.

Zinsser illustrates this approach by outlining an inverse Maslow-style pyramid of informational needs:

Imagine science writing as an upside-down pyramid. Start at the bottom with the one fact a reader must know before he can learn any more. The second sentence broadens what was stated first, making the pyramid wider, and the third sentence broadens the second, so that you can gradually move beyond fact into significance and speculation — how a new discovery alters what was known, what new avenues of research it might open, where the research might be applied. There’s no limit to how wide the pyramid can become, but your readers will understand the broad implications only if they start with one narrow fact.

But as someone who thinks a great deal about the challenge of transmuting information into wisdom , I find myself inclined to push Zinsser’s model a step further and consider the importance of cultivating a layer of wisdom above the layer of “significance and speculation.” The difference might be subtle, but it’s an important one: After all, when one reads the very finest science writing — be it Oliver Sacks writing about the mind or Diane Ackerman about the senses or Stephen Jay Gould about lepidoptery or Robin Wall Kimmerer about moss — one walks away informed about the significance of these scientific phenomena, certainly, but more than that, one walks away elevated and enriched and illuminated with a new appreciation of our “strange and shimmering world.”

On Writing Well remains absolutely indispensable, exploring such essential aspects of the craft as the key to sophisticated simplicity, the core transaction between the writer and the reader, the art of the interview, and the most fruitful attitude for the writer. Complement it with Cheryl Strayed on the importance of faith and humility in writing , Susan Sontag’s advice to aspiring writers , Virginia Woolf on writing and self-doubt , E.B. White on the two faces of discipline , and Ann Patchett on why self-forgiveness is the most important tool of writing , then revisit this ongoing archive of great writers’ advice on the craft .

— Published May 27, 2015 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/27/william-zinsser-on-writing-well-science/ —

www.themarginalian.org

PRINT ARTICLE

Email article, filed under, books culture science william zinsser writing, view full site.

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy . (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)

William Zinsser - Writer

• Photo Gallery

William Zinsser was a lifelong journalist and nonfiction writer—he began his career on the New York Herald Tribune in 1946—and was also a teacher, best known for his book On Writing Well , a companion held in affection by three generations of writers, reporters, editors, teachers and students. His 18 other books range from commentary ( The Writer Who Stayed ), memoir ( Writing Places; Writing About Your Life ) to travel ( American Places ), jazz ( Mitchell & Ruff ), American popular song ( Easy to Remember ), baseball ( Spring Training ) and the craft of writing ( Writing to Learn ). During the 1970s he was at Yale University, where he was master of Branford College and taught the influential nonfiction workshop that would start many writers and editors on their careers. From 2010 - 11 he wrote a weekly blog for The American Scholar , "Zinsser on Friday" about the craft of writing, popular culture, and the arts. That column recently won The National Magazine Award for digital commentary and has now been published as a book, The Writer Who Stayed ( Paul Dry Books ).

Copyright 2015 William K. Zinsser. All Rights Reserved.