Zinsser
“Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it’s beautiful?
Simplify, simplify.”
I really liked this closing of Zinsser’s last paragraph in chapter 3, because he writes so succinctly about the power of simplifying. He just really hits it home here. I think this is amazing advice, because I know I used to write only to impress. I would write in extra words of no value – they just sounded good. Looking back, my papers probably made no sense. Zinsser captures that idea here so clearly. “Simplify, simplify.”
No responses yet