Hacker News Reader

...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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com