This book is chock-full of good instruction and tips. Those are his main themes, demonstrated by example time and again. The “clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity” mentioned earlier are what the author calls his “four articles of faith” (p. In one chapter in this section, he gives readers a window into his thought processes by taking them through a longer piece he wrote and discussing why he made the choices he did. Part 4 explores attitudes: developing confidence and your own style, etc. But the piece grabbed me because it shared one person’s story rather than a detailed technical report. He gave an example about race car driving, something I have zero interest in. 171-172).įocus on the human element no matter what you’re writing about. In one exercise, he had educators rewrite “Evaluative procedures for the objectives were also established based on acceptable criteria,” keeping in mind “clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity.” The best result: “At the end of the year we will evaluate our progress” (pp. One business hired Zinsser specifically to help them with communication, because even their engineers couldn’t understand each other any more. A couple of the principles in this section are:ĭe-jargonize. But I have a compulsion to read all of a book. I might have been tempted to skip or at least skim through this section, as most of my writing doesn’t fit those categories. Part 3 discusses a variety of forms: the travel article, memoir, science and technology, sports, business, arts, humor. Part 2 deals with methods: the unity of the piece, the lead and ending, and various other aspects. The first of the book’s four parts covers “Principles”: grammar, style, word usage, eliminating clutter, etc. My copy was published in 2016 with a 2006 introduction by Zinsser explaining the most recent update to include the computer era. On Writing Well was published in 1976 and has been updated numerous times. He began as a journalist, later wrote for magazines, wrote books on a wide variety of topics, and then began to teach writing.

The subtitle, which I assume is not originally Zinsser’s and was added later, is “The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.” On Writing Well by William Zinsser is on just about every list of books recommended for writers.

On writing well book review