On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition

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Highlights

Nobody told all the new computer writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. — location: 93

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. — location: 127

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. — location: 146

two of the most important qualities that this book will go in search of: humanity and warmth. — location: 150

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 will achieve the greatest clarity and strength. — location: 151

We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon. — location: 157

the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. — location: 163

Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s 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. — location: 163

Simplify, simplify. — location: 175

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. — location: 181

It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English. — location: 181

The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds—a person assailed by many forces competing for attention. — location: 183

Thinking clearly is a conscious act that writers must force on themselves, as if they were working on any other project that requires logic: making a shopping list or doing an algebra problem. — location: 201

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. — location: 204

If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard. — location: 206

Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose. — location: 228

“Experiencing” is one of the worst clutterers. — location: 239

Clutter is political correctness gone amok. — location: 246

Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes. — location: 247

When the Digital Equipment Corporation eliminated 3,000 jobs its statement didn’t mention layoffs; those were “involuntary methodologies.” When an Air Force missile crashed, it “impacted with the ground prematurely.” When General Motors had a plant shutdown, that was a “volume-related production-schedule adjustment.” Companies that go belly-up have “a negative cash-flow position.” — location: 248

Clutter is the language of the Pentagon calling an invasion a “reinforced protective reaction strike” and justifying its vast budgets on the need for “counterforce deterrence.” — location: 251

clutter is the enemy. — location: 263

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) and hundreds more. Beware of all the slippery new fad words: paradigm and parameter, prioritize and potentialize. They are all weeds that will smother what you write. Don’t dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don’t interface with anybody. — location: 263

Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice. — location: 277

Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself. — location: 314

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being examined for a hernia, — location: 316

A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing. — location: 318

Writers are obviously at their most natural when they write in the first person. — location: 333

Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity. — location: 333

Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. — location: 405

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. — location: 406

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. — location: 515

If all your sentences move at the same plodding gait, which even you recognize as deadly but don’t know how to cure, read them aloud. (I write entirely by ear and read everything aloud before letting it go out into the world.) — location: 549

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis. — location: 685

If you went to work for a newspaper that required you to write two or three articles every day, you would be a better writer after six months. — location: 686

Unity is the anchor of good writing. — location: 693

you must choose the tense in which you are principally going to address the reader, — location: 702

any tone is acceptable. But don’t mix two or three. — location: 706

Such fatal mixtures are common in writers who haven’t learned control. — location: 706

Therefore ask yourself some basic questions before you start. For example: “In what capacity am I going to address the reader?” (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?) “What pronoun and tense am I going to use?” “What style?” (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?) “What attitude am I going to take toward the material?” (Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?) “How much do I want to cover?” “What one point do I want to make?” — location: 722

Most nonfiction writers have a definitiveness complex. They feel that they are under some obligation—to the subject, to their honor, to the gods of writing—to make their article the last word. — location: 726

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. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader’s mind. — location: 735

Once you have your unities decided, there’s no material you can’t work into your frame. — location: 738

all the unities must be fitted into the edifice you finally put together, however backwardly they may be assembled, — location: 749

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. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead.” — location: 754

Therefore your lead must capture the reader immediately and force him to keep reading. — location: 763

Next the lead must do some real work. It must provide hard details that tell the reader why the piece was written and why he ought to read it. But don’t dwell on the reason. Coax the reader a little more; keep him inquisitive. — location: 766

take special care with the last sentence of each paragraph—it’s the crucial springboard to the next paragraph. Try to give that sentence an extra twist of humor or surprise, like the periodic “snapper” in the routine of a stand-up comic. Make the reader smile and you’ve got him for at least one more paragraph. — location: 768

The reader is now safely hooked, and the hardest part of the writer’s job is over. — location: 805

One reason for citing this lead is to note that salvation often lies not in the writer’s style but in some odd fact he or she was able to discover. — location: 806

One moral of this story is that you should always collect more material than you will use. — location: 816

Every article is strong in proportion to the surplus of details from which you can choose the few that will serve you best—if you don’t go on gathering facts forever. At some point you must stop researching and start writing. — location: 816

Try to give your lead a freshness of perception or detail. — location: 832

Knowing when to end an article is far more important than most writers realize. — location: 895

Like the minister’s sermon that builds to a series of perfect conclusions that never conclude, an article that doesn’t stop where it should stop becomes a drag and therefore a failure. — location: 899

That’s the negative reason for remembering the importance of the last sentence. Failure to know where that sentence should occur can wreck an article that until its final stage has been tightly constructed. 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. — location: 914

For the nonfiction writer, the simplest way of putting this into a rule is: when you’re ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit. — location: 920

Something I often do in my writing is to bring the story full circle—to strike at the end an echo of a note that was sounded at the beginning. It gratifies my sense of symmetry, and it also pleases the reader, completing with its resonance the journey we set out on together. — location: 932

But what usually works best is a quotation. Go back through your notes to find some remark that has a sense of finality, or that’s funny, or that adds an unexpected closing detail. — location: 933

Surprise is the most refreshing element in nonfiction writing. If something surprises you it will also surprise—and delight—the people you are writing for, especially as you conclude your story and send them on their way. — location: 944

Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an activeverb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer. — location: 951

“Joe saw him” is strong. “He was seen by Joe” is weak. The first is short and precise; it leaves no doubt about who did what. The second is necessarily longer and it has an insipid quality: something was done by somebody to someone else. It’s also ambiguous. How often was he seen by Joe? Once? Every day? Once a week? A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader’s energy. Nobody ever quite knows what is being perpetrated by whom and on whom. — location: 952

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. Active verbs also enable us to visualize an activity because they require a pronoun (“he”), or a noun (“the boy”), or a person (“Mrs. Scott”) to put them in motion. Many verbs also carry in their imagery or in their sound a suggestion of what they mean: glitter, dazzle, twirl, beguile, scatter, swagger, poke, pamper, vex. — location: 959

Make active verbs activate your sentences, and avoid the kind that need an appended preposition to complete their work. Don’t set up a business that you can start or launch. Don’t say that the president of the company stepped down. Did he resign? Did he retire? Did he get fired? Be precise. Use precise verbs. — location: 963

You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning. — location: 968

Don’t use adverbs unless they do necessary work. Spare us the news that the winning athlete grinned widely. — location: 974

Most adjectives are also unnecessary. — location: 981

adjective-by-habit—a habit you should get rid of. — location: 987

Not every oak has to be gnarled. — location: 988

The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader. — location: 988

Good writing is lean and confident. — location: 996

“Very” is a useful word to achieve emphasis, but far more often it’s clutter. — location: 999

There’s no need to call someone very methodical. Either he is methodical or he isn’t. — location: 999

Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader’s trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don’t diminish that belief. Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold. — location: 1000

The Exclamation Point. Don’t use it unless you must to achieve a certain effect. It has a gushy aura, the breathless excitement of a debutante commenting on an event that was exciting only to her: — location: 1010

Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with “but.” If that’s what you learned, unlearn it—there’s — location: 1038

Always make sure your readers are oriented. Always ask yourself where you left them in the previous sentence. — location: 1051

Your style will be warmer and truer to your personality if you use contractions like “I’ll” and “won’t” and “can’t” when they fit comfortably into what you’re writing. “I’ll be glad to see them if they don’t get mad” is less stiff than “I will be glad to see them if they do not get mad.” — location: 1052

Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it. — location: 1122

Keep your paragraphs short. — location: 1128

Paragraphing is a subtle but important element in writing nonfiction articles and books—a road map constantly telling your reader how you have organized your ideas. Study good nonfiction writers to see how they do it. You’ll find that almost all of them think in paragraph units, not in sentence units. Each paragraph has its own integrity of content and structure. — location: 1147

A style that converts every “he” into a “they” will quickly turn to mush. — location: 1169