On Writing Well
by William Zinsser
Zinsser's guide to nonfiction: simplicity, clutter, style, the audience, words, unity, the lead and the ending, then forms: people, places, memoir, science, business, humor. It is warm, exact and itself a model of what it teaches. For anyone who writes emails, reports or anything else, it is the one book.
Read it if…
you write at work and want to write clearly and well.
Skip it if…
you write fiction; see King or Lamott.
Three things you will actually use
- Clutter is the disease; cut every unnecessary word.
- Write for yourself; the reader follows a confident voice.
- Unity of tense, pronoun and mood.
Do this first
Take one paragraph you wrote this week and cut it by half without losing meaning.
Our verdict
The nonfiction writing classic.
Compare with other Motivation books
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