Preface

Ironically, Zinsser is not a good writer. How would I describe his work? Garralous: half of it could be elided without any loss in quality. Imagine becoming a successful writer by writing books about writing. Reminds me of the guy who got rich by writing a book about how to get rich.

…but Zinsser has some good advice.

They are noted below, along with my own ideas.

Key Take outs:

How to get good at writing?

• Read a tonne of good writing,
• much bad writing,
• and write yourself, continually iterating on what you’ve written.

You’ll get a feel for what works, what doesn’t, and you’ll get more efficient at writing.

How is the book?

• Eliminate clutter and unecessary verbiage.
• Watch out for trite and dreary cliches. e.g. “New York’s finest”

…..and that’s it.

Part 1: Principles

Minimal & Simple & Avoid Clutter

Remove extraneous words. Simple and explicit writing works best. e.g. the writings of US Grant, and Zachary Taylor.

Style

• Take a stand, unapologetically. Rather than making vague statements.
• Style and minimalism may conflict. In response, Zinsser advocates learning to cut down your writing to its bare minimum, and to then add style later.

Audience

Zinsser says: write for yourself. He adds: readers don’t know what they want, until they’ve read it. So don’t try to market to a particular audience. Let the audience find you, rather than the other way around.

I agree but would add: be aware of what you are writing, and who you are writing for. If it’s a children’s book, then don’t write it as you would a technical academic paper.

Words

• Avoid imprecise words, and dreary cliches. e.g. “New York’s finest” to mean: cops.
• Use a dictionary/thesaurus to find the precise word.
• Consider: words can be used to alliterative effect, and how it may sound to the ear.
• Lastly, consider how a sentence can be worded:

e.g.

Times like these try men’s souls. How trying it is to live in these times! These are trying times for men’s souls. Soulwise, these are trying times.

Four different ways to write the same thing.

Part II: Methods

Unity

• Choose a pronoun, and a tone (whatever that is), but make it consistent.
• Make up your mind on a single point you want to get across to your reader.

Lead

• Readers, must be induced to read further. You’ve got them to start, now don’t lose them. Whet their curiousity with a question, and then answer it in the next paragraph.

Bits & Pieces

(i) Use strong verbs

“Joe saw him” (strong) vs. He was seen by Joe (weak).

(ii) Avoid adverbs and adjectives that don’t add meaning. i.e. bureaucract speak: “e.g. reflexive interactive cloud based synergy - modern RESTful solutions”

(iii) Avoid useless quantifiers: e.g. “it was pretty expensive” i.e. be clear.

Punctuation

Full stops: short sentences are fine.

Exclamation Marks: avoid them if possible; let the sentence construction obviate it’s need. Leave clues to let the reader discover what you mean.

Zinsser continues with miscellaneous bits and bobs that are too trying to write here.

Part III - Forms

Nonfiction as Writing

• An entirely superflous chapter.

Writing About People

Interesting stories come about when they are about people. Zinsser says, quote them, and you will capture their feel. Quote actively:

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.”

• Joseph Mitchell uses quotes brilliantly. His writing is worth reading.

Writing about Travel

• An entirely superflous chapter.

Writing about yourself

• Write for yourself, not an editor.
• Everything you write must move the story along, doing useful work.
• Especially write about people.

Writing about Science and Technology

• Assume that readers know nothing.
• Start with something that is relatable to them.

Business Writing

• Be vivid: taste, see, smell, feel, and think.

Avoid:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Emulate:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Sports Writing

A superflous chapter.

Arts

A superflous chapter. I skipped most of it.

Humour

Highlight absurdities.

The Rest….

Zinsser doesn’t add anything new. It’s more of the same.

Shoud I buy the book?

I don’t think you should. I’ve summarised the main points above.