On Writing Well, William Zinnsner (10 down, 42 to go)
by matt
I should have read this book in journalism school.
William Zinsser’s classic guide to cutting the crap out of your writing is a great complement to Strunk & White’s, Elements of Style.
Zinsser restates all the pillars of good writing: cut the jargon; write in a conversational style; keep sentences active; rewriting is more important than writing; with plenty of anecdotes along the way. Not surprisingly, it’s a very well-written book, with very few – if any - wasted words.
These days, with the advent of blogging, e-mail, and now, Twitter, everyone is a writer and Zinsser’s advice is more relevant than ever.
Me? My writing has been poisoned by years of academia. Hopefully, this book can help me to shake off some of the bad habits I’ve picked up over the years.
Comments
This was on the reccomended reading list when I went to Journalism school, but I went for the Strunk and White instead. I still love the idea of never ‘wasting’ words.
I am the assistant to the editor of an academic journal called the Medical Law Review and I always think in the back of my head ‘I could shave at least a thousand words off this paper…’ But so it goes. Instead I fix their comma usage.