William Zinsser, Author of “On Writing Well”, Dies at 92

nytimes.com

51 points·lispython··8 comments

He was the oracle of sound writing practice. I studied the example page[1] from his book with his hand-written edits like it was ancient cuneiform. Always the consummate perfectionist in the professional sense of the word, Zinsser was part of the reason I was a technical writer for nearly 15 of my professional years.

1. http://i.imgur.com/UGWP4vi.jpg

...and on the other side, a linguistics professor is a bit more critical about his advice:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18345

(I expect there will be a post on that site about Zinsser's death too.)

I read the language log pretty regularly and they tend to have quality content. Then you got a post like this which says the book is bad and everything about it is bad after skimming it in a book store. An entire review based on skimming and a few out of context quotes does not make a well researched and thought out position on a book. At no point does the author say they actually read the book cover to cover. This is just a rant against being prescriptive in your writing since it is not "the one true way".

I have read On Writing Well and there is a lot of material covered in this book. I recommend the chapters on editing as that was Zinsser's day job.

That example affirms the power of "show, don't tell." Those pages, in the raw, assure the novice or insecure writer that even experts revise and resubmit.

RIP, Zissner.

Zinsser* - my apologies.

On Writing Well is available online.

https://archive.org/details/OnWritingWell

It helped me go from low 70s to high 80s at Uni.

Given the subject, would it be amiss to point out that the title as written here is missing a comma?

Now corrected.

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