Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

I enjoyed how Zinsser advises to “look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly” (p. 16) because there have been many times lately when I find myself frustrated because of an author’s choice of wordy language. Even in college textbooks, authors use complicated vocabulary and complex phrases to sound “educated and formal” when in reality, it only results in confused readers. When I read this part of Zinsser’s book, I was reminded of Albert Einstein when he said “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. All of writing has a purpose, so maintaining clarity helps writers to better assert their purpose. I hope that I can try and follow Zinsser’s advice and I found that his trick of “[putting] brackets around every component in a piece of writing that wasn’t doing useful work” (p. 15) really helps because it allows for a more gentle editing approach. Usually, I write very few drafts so I hope that I can begin to edit and “prune” my work much more now.

One piece of advice from Zinsser that I like is the following: “Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore, a fundamental rule is: be yourself “(Zinsser, 20). As a reader, I feel the same way. I want the writer to sound like himself. I don’t want him to pretend to be someone he is not just to please me. I am open-minded and ready to hear what he has to say…not what he thinks I want him to say. (I think that Zinsser actually embodies this perfectly; he writes for himself and doesn’t concede to what he thinks the reader wants to hear. For example, he often admits that writing is hard for him and that he is constantly writing and re-writing. It may be hard, especially as a writer, to admit this, yet he stays true to himself and comes across as more genuine.) As a writer, I’ll admit that “being yourself” can be hard. Often, writers feel insecure and self-conscious. They may doubt their opinions or their style. This feeling of doubt often causes them to lose themselves in the work. They become unrecognizable, buried under the verbiage they use as a crutch. I want to try to avoid this in my writing. I want to try to let my voice shine through the words, instead of allowing it to drown in them.