Name: On Writing Well
Rating: 4.119047619047619 (63 reviews)

William Knowlton Zinsser

The revised and enlarged third edition of Zinsser's trusted writing guide covers the principles of good writing while including information on technical, business and sports writing, humor, interviews, working with a word processor, sexism, and a writer's attitudes toward language and craft.

An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

On Writing Well

Ivy Chen

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual-it catches the eve before it has a chance to catch the brain. 

One of the richest travel books written by an American is Walden, though Thoreau only went a mile out of town. Finally, however, what brings a place alive is human activity: people doing the things that give a locale its character. 

Dhrumil Patel

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

“Who am I writing for?" It's a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience-every reader is a different person.

You must choose the tense in which you are principally going to address the reader, no matter how many glances you may take backward or forward along the way.

The act of writing generates some cluster of thoughts or memories that you didn't anticipate. Don't fight such a current if it feels right. Trust your material if it's taking you into terrain you didn't intend to enter but where the vibrations are good. Adjust your style accordingly and proceed to whatever destination you reach. Don't become the prisoner of a preconceived plan. Writing is no respecter of blueprints.

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual — it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read.

William Zinsser

On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sole, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition

Matt Stein

My absolute favorite book on writing. Warm, practical advice for writing with clarity, precision, and humanity.

Erwin Lemuel Oliva

Still good the second time. One of the best books in writing. Apart from the basics, Zinsser gives good examples to make a clear point about his "rules" in writing. I wish I read this book before I entered journalism. Non-fiction writing is clear writing. Writing well is the result of a clear mind.

Deyana

As a writer, it's always difficult to judge others' writing. It feels a tad immoral. Every process is different, but regardless of Zinsser and I's competing views on writing, I had a much more difficult time getting through this material simply because of Zinsser's attitude and contradictions. I'll call it what it is, sexism under the guise of feigned equality, and as other reviewers have pointed out, one need only look at the language in his own pieces while he uses distinct words to describe other folks outside of his white-washed writing mannerisms. 

All I know is that if I had Zinsser as a professor, I might have thought that writing wasn't for me. I'm glad I read this if only to remind me what wonderful privileges I have had as an individual and as a writer in both my education and workplace in terms of pursuing writing. This book, at least to a reader unfamiliar with Zinsser, felt more like a self-serving project and an amalgamation of his other works, supplemented with what he calls "humor" and personality. I'll reserve my comments on this for perhaps another time. In the meantime, I've got writing to do.

Emma Friedheim

I thought this would be a reference book, but it honestly reads like a novel (or at least a really good, if long, article). Zinsser sounds like he was an amazing professor. I read this as I wrote my grad school application essays and I really think it helped me cut out a ton of fluff and jargon. Love live concise, straightforward writing!

Sebastian Witowski

Succinct advices on writing, nice and short read.

Lance Willett

This is a book I'll read once a year to freshen up my writing craftsmanship. A great balance of practical and intangible. The author tells us if writing feels hard, it's because it is hard. I love books like this that embody the principles they teach. A fun and enjoyable read that instructs and illustrates.

Ilia Markov

This is a really good book, just keep in mind that it’s more a collection of essays than an actual textbook.

Artas Bartas

I came across this book by way of Amazon recommendations. It's the best recommendation I received from Amazon to date. As the title suggests, "On Writing Well" is a guide to better writing. William Zinsser covers a very broad territory in his book: from discussing style issues tripping up the novices and craft secrets employed by celebrity writers to practical advice on writing a good travel story or organizing your memories into a publishable memoir.

Over the years, I have read several books of the same genre, and it strikes me how different Zinsser is in his approach. He avoids the temptation of romanticizing the craft of writing and instead tackles the nitty-gritty questions that any man (or woman) of letters has to confront: How to quote the people you interviewed? Where to start a travelogue? What makes for a great science article? And when to stop writing? The book offers illuminating answers to these questions.

Another refreshing thing about this book is how confident William Zinsser is about his writing. To put it bluntly, here is an author not afraid to quote his work as the standard of quality. How many millennials would have the guts to set their humblebragging manners aside and just say "here is how it should be done!"? Unexpected as it is, this approach yields valuable insights: you can read excerpts from Zinsser's articles *and* learn about the motives and considerations that shaped them. 

"On Writing Well" was originally published in 1976. It has been reissued at least nine times since then. This explains why many cultural, social, and political references you come across feel dated. But when it comes to writing advice, the book feels as relevant in 2017 as it was back in the 1980s. I think about it as a first aid kit to overcoming writer's block.

On Writing Well An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

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