The next time you revise that letter or memo or essay, remember William Zinsser’s advice:
Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important. The airline pilot who wakes us to announce that he is presently anticipating experiencing considerable weather wouldn't dream of saying that there's a storm ahead and it may get bumpy. The sentence is too simple — there must be something wrong with it.
But 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 which carries the same meaning that is 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, ironically, in proportion to education and rank.
(Quoted from page 6 of On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. Harper Perennial, 2006.)
For a brief biography of William Zinsser, click here. For images of or relating William Zinsser, click here.
For ten writing tips from William Zinsser, click here.
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