on writing well, 25th anniversary the classic guide to writing nonfiction

The City Dwellers Weekend Guests The Haircurl Papers Pop Goes America The Paradise Bit The Lunacy Boom On Writing Well Writing With a Word Processor Willie and Dwike republished as Mitch

Writing

Well

BOOKS BY WILLIAM ZINSSER

Any Old Place With You Seen Any Good Movies Lately?

The City Dwellers Weekend Guests The Haircurl Papers Pop Goes America The Paradise Bit The Lunacy Boom

On Writing Well Writing With a Word Processor Willie and Dwike

(republished as Mitchell and Ruff)

Writing to Learn Spring Training American Places Speaking of Journalism Easy to Remember

AUDIO BOOKS BY WILLIAM ZINSSER

On Writing Well How to Write a Memoir

BOOKS E D I T E D BY WILLIAM ZINSSER

Extraordinary lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir Spiritual Quests: The Art and Craft of Religious Writing Paths of Resistance: The Art and Craft of the Political Novel Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children They Went: The Art and Craft of Travel Writing Going on Faith: Writing as a Spiritual Quest

ON WRITING WELL Sixth Edition, revised and updated Copyright © 1976, 1980,

1985, 1988, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001 by William K Zinsser All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or re- produced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case

of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews For information dress HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

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First HarperResource Quill edition published 2001.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zinsser, William Knowlton.

On writing well : the classic guide to writing nonfiction / William Zinsser — 25th anniversary ed.

02 03 04 05 •/RRD 109 8 7 6 5 4

The Lead and the Ending

Bits & Pieces

PART ill F o r m s

Nonfiction as Literature

Writing About People: The Interview

Writing About Places: The Travel Article

Writing About Yourself: The Memoir

Science and Technology

Business Writing: Writing in Your Job

208

viii CONTENTS

PART IV Attitudes

20 The Sound of Your Voice 233

2 1 Enjoyment, Fear and Confidence 243

2 2 The Tyranny of the Final Product 255

23 A Writer s Decisions 265

24 Write as Well as You Can 286 SOURCES 295 INDEX 301

CSSQ

When I first wrote this book, in 1976, the readers I had in mindwere a relatively small segment of the population: students, writ-ers, editors and people who wanted to learn to write I wrote it on

a typewriter, the highest technology then available I had noinkling of the electronic marvels just around the corner that wereabout to revolutionize the act of writing First came the wordprocessor, in the 1980s, which made the computer an everydaytool for people who had never thought of themselves as writers.Then came the Internet and e-mail, in the 1990s, which com-pleted the revolution Today everybody in the world is writing toeverybody else, keeping in touch and doing business across everyborder and time zone

To me this is nothing less than a miracle, curing overnight whatappeared to be a deep American disorder I've been repeatedlytold by people in nonwriting occupations—especially people inscience, technology, medicine, business and finance—that theyhate writing and can't write and don't want to be made to write.One thing they particularly didn't want to write was letters.Just getting started on a letter loomed as a chore with so manyformalities—Where's the stationery? Where's the envelope?Where's the stamp?—that they would keep putting it off, andwhen they finally did sit down to write they would spend theentire first paragraph explaining why they hadn't written sooner

In the second paragraph they would describe the weather in theirpart of the country—a subject of no interest anywhere else Only

in the third paragraph would they begin to relax and say whatthey wanted to say

Then along came e-mail and all the formalities went away.E-mail has no etiquette It doesn't require stationery, or neatness,

or proper spelling, or preliminary chitchat E-mail writers are likepeople who stop a friend on the sidewalk and say, "Did you seethe game last night?" WHAP! No amenities They just start typ-ing at full speed So here's the miracle: All those people who said

they hate writing and can't write and don't want to write can write and do want to write In fact, they can't be turned off Never have

so many Americans written so profusely and with so few tions Which means that it wasn't a cognitive problem after all Itwas a cultural problem, rooted in that old bugaboo of Americaneducation: fear

inhibi-Fear of writing gets planted in American schoolchildren at anearly age, especially children of scientific or technical or mechan-ical bent They are led to believe that writing is a special languageowned by the English teacher, available only to the humanisticfew who have "a gift for words." But writing isn't a skill that somepeople are born with and others aren't, like a gift for art or music.Writing is talking to someone else on paper Anybody who canthink clearly can write clearly, about any subject at all That hasalways been the central premise of this book

On one level, therefore, the new fluency created by e-mail isterrific news Any invention that eliminates the fear of writing is

up there with air conditioning and the lightbulb But, as always,there's a catch Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that theessence of writing is rewriting Just because they are writing withease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well

That condition was first revealed in the 1980s, when peoplebegan writing on word processors Two opposite things hap-pened The word processor made good writers better and bad

writers worse Good writers know that very few sentences comeout right the first time, or even the third time or the fifth time.For them the word processor was a rare gift, enabling them tofuss endlessly with their sentences—cutting and revising andreshaping—without the drudgery of retyping Bad writersbecame even more verbose because writing was suddenly so easyand their sentences looked so pretty on the screen How couldsuch beautiful sentences not be perfect?

E-mail pushed that verbosity to a new extreme: chatter ited Its a spontaneous medium, not conducive to slowing down orlooking back That makes it ideal for the never-ending upkeep ofpersonal life: maintaining contact with far-flung children and grand-children and friends and long-lost classmates If the writing is oftengarrulous or disorganized or not quite clear, no real harm is done.But e-mail is also where much of the world s business is nowconducted Millions of e-mail messages every day give people theinformation they need to do their job, and a badly written mes-sage can cause a lot of damage Employers have begun to realizethat they literally cannot afford to hire men and women who can'twrite sentences that are tight and logical and clear The newinformation age, for all its high-tech gadgetry, is, finally, writing-based E-mail, the Internet and the fax are all forms of writing,and writing is, finally, a craft, with its own set of tools, which arewords Like all tools, they have to be used right

unlim-On Writing Well is a craft book That's what I set out to write

25 years ago—a book that would teach the craft of writing warmlyand clearly—and its principles have never changed; they are asvalid in the digital age as they were in the age of the typewriter Idon't mean that the book itself hasn't changed I've revised andexpanded it five times since 1976 to keep pace with new trends

in the language and in society: a far greater interest in writing, for instance, and in writing about business and scienceand sports, and in nonfiction writing by women and by newcom-ers to the United States from other cultural traditions

memoir-I'm also not the same person I was 25 years ago Books thatteach, if they have a long life, should reflect who the writer hasbecome at later stages of his own long life—what he has been

doing and thinking about On Writing Well and I have grown

older and wiser together In each of the five new editions the newmaterial consisted of things I had learned since the previous edi-tion by continuing to wrestle with the craft as a writer As ateacher, I've become far more preoccupied with the intangibles

of the craft—the attitudes and values, like enjoyment and dence and intention, that keep us going and produce our bestwork But it wasn't until the sixth edition that I knew enough towrite the two chapters (21 and 22) that deal at proper length withthose attitudes and values

confi-Ultimately, however, good writing rests on craft and alwayswill I don't know what still newer electronic marvels are waitingjust around the corner to make writing twice as easy and twice asfast in the next 25 years But I do know they won't make writingtwice as good That will still require plain old hard work—clearthinking—and the plain old tools of the English language.William Zinsser

September 2001

P A R T I

-esee-Principles

The Transaction

A school in Connecticut once held "a day devoted to the arts,"and I was asked if I would come and talk about writing as avocation When I arrived I found that a second speaker hadbeen invited—Dr Brock (as I'll call him), a surgeon who hadrecently begun to write and had sold some stories to magazines

He was going to talk about writing as an avocation That made

us a panel, and we sat down to face a crowd of students andteachers and parents, all eager to learn the secrets of our glam-orous work

Dr Brock was dressed in a bright red jacket, looking vaguelybohemian, as authors are supposed to look, and the first ques-tion went to him What was it like to be a writer?

He said it was tremendous fun Coming home from an ous day at the hospital, he would go straight to his yellow padand write his tensions away The words just flowed It was easy Ithen said that writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun It was hardand lonely, and the words seldom just flowed

ardu-Next Dr Brock was asked if it was important to rewrite

4 ON WRITING WELL

Absolutely not, he said "Let it all hang out," he told us, andwhatever form the sentences take will reflect the writer at hismost natural I then said that rewriting is the essence of writing

I pointed out that professional writers rewrite their sentencesover and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten

"What do you do on days when it isn't going well?" Dr Brock

was asked He said he just stopped writing and put the workaside for a day when it would go better I then said that the pro-fessional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it Isaid that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runsaway from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling him-self He is also going broke

"What if you're feeling depressed or unhappy?" a studentasked "Won't that affect your writing?"

Probably it will, Dr Brock replied Go fishing Take a walk.Probably it won't, I said If your job is to write every day, youlearn to do it like any other job

A student asked if we found it useful to circulate in the ary world Dr Brock said he was greatly enjoying his new life as

liter-a mliter-an of letters, liter-and he told severliter-al stories of being tliter-aken tolunch by his publisher and his agent at Manhattan restaurantswhere writers and editors gather I said that professional writersare solitary drudges who seldom see other writers

"Do you put symbolism in your writing?" a student asked me

"Not if I can help it," I replied I have an unbroken record ofmissing the deeper meaning in any story, play or movie, and asfor dance and mime, I have never had any idea of what is beingconveyed

"I love symbols!" Dr Brock exclaimed, and he described with

gusto the joys of weaving them through his work

So the morning went, and it was a revelation to all of us Atthe end Dr Brock told me he was enormously interested in myanswers—it had never occurred to him that writing could be

hard I told him I was just as interested in his answers—it had

bewil-"right" way to do such personal work There are all kinds ofwriters and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you

to say what you want to say is the right method for you Somepeople write by day, others by night Some people need silence,others turn on the radio Some write by hand, some by wordprocessor, some by talking into a tape recorder Some peoplewrite their first draft in one long burst and then revise; otherscan't write the second paragraph until they have fiddled end-lessly with the first

But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense.They are driven by a compulsion to put some part of themselves

on paper, and yet they don't just write what comes naturally.They sit down to commit an act of literature, and the self whoemerges on paper is far stiffer than the person who sat down towrite The problem is to find the real man or woman behind thetension

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not thesubject being written about, but who he or she is I often findmyself reading with interest about a topic I never thought wouldinterest me—some scientific quest, perhaps What holds me isthe enthusiasm of the writer for his field How was he drawninto it? What emotional baggage did he bring along? How did itchange his life? It's not necessary to want to spend a year alone

at Walden Pond to become involved with a writer who did.This is the personal transaction that's at the heart of goodnonfiction writing Out of it come two of the most importantqualities that this book will go in search of: humanity andwarmth Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the readerreading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question

6 ON WRITING WELL

of gimmicks to "personalize" the author It s a question of usingthe English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clar-ity and strength

Can such principles be taught? Maybe not But most of themcan be learned

Simplicity

Clutter is the disease of American writing We are a societystrangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompousfrills and meaningless jargon

Who can understand the clotted language of everyday ican commerce: the memo, the corporation report, the businessletter, the notice from the bank explaining its latest "simplified"statement? What member of an insurance or medical plan candecipher the brochure explaining his costs and benefits? Whatfather or mother can put together a child's toy from the instruc-tions on the box? Our national tendency is to inflate and therebysound important The airline pilot who announces that he ispresently anticipating experiencing considerable precipitationwouldn't think of saying it may rain The sentence is too sim-ple—there must be something wrong with it

Amer-But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to itscleanest components Every word that serves no function, everylong word that could be a short word, every adverb that carriesthe same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive con-

8 ON WRITING WELL

struction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken thestrength of a sentence And they usually occur in proportion toeducation and rank

During the 1960s the president of my university wrote a ter to mollify the alumni after a spell of campus unrest "You areprobably aware," he began, "that we have been experiencingvery considerable potentially explosive expressions of dissatisfac-tion on issues only partially related." He meant that the studentshad been hassling them about different things I was far moreupset by the president s English than by the students' potentiallyexplosive expressions of dissatisfaction I would have preferredthe presidential approach taken by Franklin D Roosevelt when

let-he tried to convert into English his own governments memos,such as this blackout order of 1942:

Such preparations shall be made as will completelyobscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildingsoccupied by the Federal government during an air raid forany period of time from visibility by reason of internal orexternal illumination

"Tell them," Roosevelt said, "that in buildings where they have

to keep the work going to put something across the windows."Simplify, simplify Thoreau said it, as we are so oftenreminded, and no American writer more consistently practiced

what he preached Open Walden to any page and you will find a

man saying in a plain and orderly way what is on his mind:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,

to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could notlearn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, dis-cover that I had not lived

Simplicity 9

How can the rest of us achieve such enviable freedom fromclutter? The answer is to clear our heads of clutter Clear think-ing becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other It'simpossible for a muddy thinker to write good English He mayget away with it for a paragraph or two, but soon the reader will

be lost, and there's no sin so grave, for the reader will not easily

It won't do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy tokeep pace with the train of thought If the reader is lost, it's usu-ally because the writer hasn't been careful enough That care-lessness can take any number of forms Perhaps a sentence is soexcessively cluttered that the reader, hacking through the ver-biage, simply doesn't know what it means Perhaps a sentencehas been so shoddily constructed that the reader could read it inseveral ways Perhaps the writer has switched pronouns in mid-sentence, or has switched tenses, so the reader loses track ofwho is talking or when the action took place Perhaps Sentence

B is not a logical sequel to Sentence A; the writer, in whose headthe connection is clear, hasn't bothered to provide the missinglink Perhaps the writer has used a word incorrectly by not tak-ing the trouble to look it up He or she may think "sanguine"and "sanguinary" mean the same thing, but the difference is abloody big one The reader can only infer (speaking of big dif-ferences) what the writer is trying to imply

10 ON WRITING WELL

is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the waitei»le train

of thought My sympathies are ^ntireJLy with him.^-He'a we».

— chart» • (ffthe reader is lost, it is generally because the

writer <of tho article has not been careful enough to keep him on the «proper path,

I This carelessness can take any number of different foras.

V i

•-Perhaps a sentence is so excessively long -and cluttered that the reader, hacking his way through « M the verbiage, simply doesn't know what^the.writer neans Perhaps a sentence has been so shoddily constructed that the reader could read it in any of £w»-orthroe différent ways »He>thiri«i ho lenowa what

«the writer is trying to eay y but ho'o not ouwq.Perhaps the writer has switched pronouns in mid-sentence, or perhaps he has switched tenses, so the reader loses track of who is

talking /to whemj or exactly when the action took place haps Sentence B is not a logical sequel to Sentence A — the writer, in whose head the connection is perfectly clear, has

fou pi'u»ldin§ the missing link haps the writer has used an important word incorrectly by not taking the trouble to look it up and mnho sure» He may think that "sanguine" and "sanguinary" nean the same thing, but}

Per-yeu that(the difference is a bloody big

y ( y g e.,

A ttn only 4*y-te> infer : * « * (speaking of big ences) what the writer is trying to imply.

differ-J Faced withjmeh a- variety ef obstacles, the reader

is at first a remarkably tenacious bird He »ends te blame/ himself- )/6 obviously missed something, he thinhi, and he goes

back over the mystifying sentence, or over the whole paragraph,

Simplicity 11

piecing i t out l i k e an ancient rune, making guesses and moving

on But he won't do this for long jHe w i l l oewt ru» eu» e f patience» V^JThe writer i s making him work too hard *^

thaw he should ha»e te work (jand the reader will look for

a «rttei^who i s better at his craft.

i The writer must therefore constantly ask himself: What am

I trying to sayftn «hts sentence? /Surprisingly often, he doesn't know./ -AmTfhen he must look at what he has Jus»

written and ask: Have I said i t ? I» i t clear to someone

A Hhe^s ccmififc ween the subject for the f i r s t time? I f i t ' s not elea»y i t is because some fuzz has worked i t s way into the machinery The clear writer i s a person whe to clear-headed enough to see this stuff for what i t i s : fuzz.

i I don't mean te suggest that some people are born

clear-headed and are therefore natural writers, whereas

Sff peeple are naturally fuzzy and w i l l »he»efe»» never write well Thinking clearly is,»w entirely conscious act that the writer mustVweee feretog upon himself, just as i f he were

»u» on any other ktowl Q£ project thatffiflfcfer logic:

adding up a laundry l i s t or doing an algebra problem e

Good writing doesn't juefr come naturally, though most people obviously think 4e's aa'-caey e* walking» The professional

Two pages of the final manuscript of this chapter from the First Edition

of On Writing Well Although they look like a first draft, they had

already been rewritten and retyped—like almost every other page— four or five times With each rewrite I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and

am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut (In later tions I eliminated the sexist pronoun "he" denoting "the writer" and

edi-"the reader.")

1 2 ON WRITING WELL

Faced with such obstacles, readers are at first tenacious.They blame themselves—they obviously missed something, andthey go back over the mystifying sentence, or over the wholeparagraph, piecing it out like an ancient rune, making guessesand moving on But they won't do that for long The writer ismaking them work too hard, and they will look for one who isbetter at the craft

Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying tosay? Surprisingly often they don't know Then they must look atwhat they have written and ask: have I said it? Is it clear tosomeone encountering the subject for the first time? If it's not,some fuzz has worked its way into the machinery The clearwriter is someone clearheaded enough to see this stuff for what

it is: fuzz

I don't mean that some people are born clearheaded and aretherefore natural writers, whereas others are naturally fuzzy andwill never write well Thinking clearly is a conscious act thatwriters must force on themselves, as if they were working on anyother project that requires logic: making a shopping list or doing

an algebra problem Good writing doesn't come naturally,though most people seem to think it does Professional writersare constantly bearded by people who say they'd like to "try alittle writing sometime"—meaning when they retire from theirreal profession, like insurance or real estate, which is hard Orthey say, "I could write a book about that." I doubt it

Writing is hard work A clear sentence is no accident Veryfew sentences come out right the first time, or even the thirdtime Remember this in moments of despair If you find that

writing is hard, it's because it is hard.

Clutter

Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds—the writer is alwaysslightly behind New varieties sprout overnight, and by noonthey are part of American speech Consider what PresidentNixon's aide John Dean accomplished in just one day of testi-mony on television during the Watergate hearings The next dayeveryone in America was saying "at this point in time" instead of

"now."

Consider all the prepositions that are draped onto verbs thatdon't need any help We no longer head committees We headthem up We don't face problems anymore We face up to themwhen we can free up a few minutes A small detail, you may

say—not worth bothering about It is worth bothering about.

Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we cankeep out of it that shouldn't be there "Up" in "free up" should-n't be there Examine every word you put on paper You'll find asurprising number that don't serve any purpose

Take the adjective "personal," as in "a personal friend ofmine," "his personal feeling" or "her personal physician." Its

14 ON WRITING WELL

typical of hundreds of words that can be eliminated The sonal friend has come into the language to distinguish him orher from the business friend, thereby debasing both language

per-and friendship Someone's feeling is that person's personal

feel-ing—that's what "his" means As for the personal physician,that's the man or woman summoned to the dressing room of astricken actress so she won't have to be treated by the imper-sonal physician assigned to the theater Someday I'd like to seethat person identified as "her doctor." Physicians are physicians,friends are friends The rest is clutter

Clutter is the laborious phrase that has pushed out the shortword that means the same thing Even before John Dean, peo-ple and businesses had stopped saying "now." They were saying

"currently" ("all our operators are currently busy"), or "at thepresent time," or "presently" (which means "soon") Yet the ideacan always be expressed by "now" to mean the immediatemoment ("Now I can see him"), or by "today" to mean the his-torical present ("Today prices are high"), or simply by the verb

"to be" ("It is raining") There's no need to say, "At the presenttime we are experiencing precipitation."

"Experiencing" is one of the ultimate clutterers Even yourdentist will ask if you are experiencing any pain If he had hisown kid in the chair he would say, "Does it hurt?" He would, inshort, be himself By using a more pompous phrase in his pro-fessional role he not only sounds more important; he blunts thepainful edge of truth It's the language of the flight attendantdemonstrating the oxygen mask that will drop down if the planeshould run out of air "In the unlikely possibility that the air-craft should experience such an eventuality," she begins—aphrase so oxygen-depriving in itself that we are prepared forany disaster

Clutter is the ponderous euphemism that turns a slum into adepressed socioeconomic area, garbage collectors into waste-disposal personnel and the town dump into the volume reduc-

Clutter 15

tion unit I think of Bill Mauldin s cartoon of two hoboes riding afreight car One of them says, "I started as a simple bum, butnow I'm hard-core unemployed." Clutter is political correctnessgone amok I saw an ad for a boys' camp designed to provide

"individual attention for the minimally exceptional."

Clutter is the officiai language used by corporations to hidetheir mistakes When the Digital Equipment Corporation elimi-nated 3,000 jobs its statement didn't mention layoffs; those were

"involuntary methodologies." When an Air Force missile crashed,

it "impacted with the ground prematurely." When GeneralMotors had a plant shutdown, that was a "volume-related pro-duction-schedule adjustment." Companies that go belly-up have

"a negative cash-flow position."

Clutter is the language of the Pentagon calling an invasion a

"reinforced protective reaction strike" and justifying its vast gets on the need for "counterforce deterrence." As GeorgeOrwell pointed out in "Politics and the English Language," anessay written in 1946 but often cited during the Vietnam andCambodia years of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, "politicalspeech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible .Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism,question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." Orwell's warningthat clutter is not just a nuisance but a deadly tool has come true

bud-in the recent decades of American military adventurism bud-inSoutheast Asia and other parts of the world

Verbal camouflage reached new heights during GeneralAlexander Haig's tenure as President Reagan's secretary of state.Before Haig nobody had thought of saying "at this juncture ofmaturization" to mean "now." He told the American people thatterrorism could be fought with "meaningful sanctionary teeth"and that intermediate nuclear missiles were "at the vortex ofcruciality." As for any worries that the public might harbor, hismessage was "leave it to Al," though what he actually said was:

"We must push this to a lower decibel of public fixation I don't

it is interesting to note, make it interesting; are we not all

stupe-fied by what follows when someone says, "This will interestyou"? Don't inflate what needs no inflating: "with the possibleexception of" (except), "due to the fact that" (because), "hetotally lacked the ability to" (he couldn't), "until such time as"(until), "for the purpose of" (for)

Is there any way to recognize clutter at a glance? Here's adevice my students at Yale found helpful I would put bracketsaround every component in a piece of writing that wasn't doinguseful work Often just one word got bracketed: the unnecessarypreposition appended to a verb ("order up"), or the adverb thatcarries the same meaning as the verb ("smile happily"), or theadjective that states a known fact ("tall skyscraper") Often mybrackets surrounded the little qualifiers that weaken any sen-tence they inhabit ("a bit," "sort of), or phrases like "in a sense,"which don't mean anything Sometimes my brackets surrounded

Clutter 17

an entire sentence—the one that essentially repeats what theprevious sentence said, or that says something readers don'tneed to know or can figure out for themselves Most first draftscan be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or los-ing the authors voice

My reason for bracketing the students' superfluous words,instead of crossing them out, was to avoid violating their sacredprose I wanted to leave the sentence intact for them to analyze

I was saying, "I may be wrong, but I think this can be deleted

and the meaning won't be affected But you decide Read the

sentence without the bracketed material and see if it works." Inthe early weeks of the term I handed back papers that were fes-tooned with brackets Entire paragraphs were bracketed Butsoon the students learned to put mental brackets around theirown clutter, and by the end of the term their papers werealmost clean Today many of those students are professionalwriters, and they tell me, "I still see your brackets—they're fol-lowing me through life."

You can develop the same eye Look for the clutter in yourwriting and prune it ruthlessly Be grateful for everything youcan throw away Reexamine each sentence you put on paper Isevery word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed withmore economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish?Are you hanging on to something useless just because you thinkit's beautiful?

Simplify, simplify

So much for early warnings about the bloated monsters that lie

in ambush for the writer trying to put together a clean Englishsentence

"But," you may say, "if I eliminate everything you think isclutter and if I strip every sentence to its barest bones, will there

be anything left of me?" The question is a fair one; simplicitycarried to an extreme might seem to point to a style little moresophisticated than "Dick likes Jane" and "See Spot run."

I'll answer the question first on the level of carpentry ThenI'll get to the larger issue of who the writer is and how to pre-serve his or her identity

Few people realize how badly they write Nobody has shownthem how much excess or murkiness has crept into their styleand how it obstructs what they are trying to say If you give me

an eight-page article and I tell you to cut it to four pages, you'llhowl and say it can't be done Then you'll go home and do it,and it will be much better After that comes the hard part: cut-ting it to three

Style 19

The point is that you have to strip your writing down beforeyou can build it back up You must know what the essential toolsare and what job they were designed to do Extending themetaphor of carpentry, it's first necessary to be able to saw woodneatly and to drive nails Later you can bevel the edges or addelegant finials, if that's your taste But you can never forget thatyou are practicing a craft that's based on certain principles Ifthe nails are weak, your house will collapse If your verbs areweak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.I'll admit that certain nonfiction writers, like Tom Wolfe andNorman Mailer, have built some remarkable houses But theseare writers who spent years learning their craft, and when at lastthey raised their fanciful turrets and hanging gardens, to thesurprise of all of us who never dreamed of such ornamentation,they knew what they were doing Nobody becomes Tom Wolfeovernight, not even Tom Wolfe

First, then, learn to hammer the nails, and if what you build

is sturdy and serviceable, take satisfaction in its plain strength.But you will be impatient to find a "style"—to embellish theplain words so that readers will recognize you as someone spe-cial You will reach for gaudy similes and tinseled adjectives, as

if "style" were something you could buy at the style store anddrape onto your words in bright decorator colors (Decoratorcolors are the colors that decorators come in.) There is no stylestore; style is organic to the person doing the writing, as much apart of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of it Trying toadd style is like adding a toupee At first glance the formerlybald man looks young and even handsome But at secondglance—and with a toupee there's always a second glance—hedoesn't look quite right The problem is not that he doesn't lookwell groomed; he does, and we can only admire the wigmaker'sskill The point is that he doesn't look like himself

This is the problem of writers who set out deliberately to

garnish their prose You lose whatever it ià that makes you

20 ON WRITING WELL

unique The reader will notice if you are putting on airs ers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine.Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself

Read-No rule, however, is harder to follow It requires writers to

do two things that by their metabolism are impossible Theymust relax, and they must have confidence

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax whilebeing examined for a hernia, and as for confidence, see howstiffly he sits, glaring at the screen that awaits his words Seehow often he gets up to look for something to eat or drink Awriter will do anything to avoid the act of writing I can testifyfrom my newspaper days that the number of trips to the watercooler per reporter-hour far exceeds the body's need for fluids.What can be done to put the writer out of these miseries?Unfortunately, no cure has been found I can only offer the con-soling thought that you are not alone Some days will go betterthan others Some will go so badly that you'll despair of everwriting again We have all had many of those days and will havemany more

Still, it would be nice to keep the bad days to a minimum,which brings me back to the problem of trying to relax

Assume that you are the writer sitting down to write Youthink your article must be of a certain length or it won't seemimportant You think how august it will look in print You think

of all the people who will read it You think that it must have thesolid weight of authority You think that its style must dazzle Nowonder you tighten; you are so busy thinking of your awesomeresponsibility to the finished article that you can't even start Yetyou vow to be worthy of the task, and, casting about for grandphrases that wouldn't occur to you if you weren't trying so hard

to make an impression, you plunge in

Paragraph 1 is a disaster—a tissue of generalities that seem

to have come out of a machine No person could have written

them Paragraph 2 isn't much better But Paragraph 3 begins to

Style 21have a somewhat human quality, and by Paragraph 4 you begin

to sound like yourself You've started to relax It s amazing howoften an editor can throw away the first three or four paragraphs

of an article, or even the first few pages, and start with the graph where the writer begins to sound like himself or herself.Not only are those first paragraphs impersonal and ornate; theydon't say anything—they are a self-conscious attempt at a fancyintroduction What I'm always looking for as an editor is a sen-tence that says something like "I'll never forget the day when

para-I " para-I think, "Aha! A person!"

Writers are obviously at their most natural when they write

in the first person Writing is an intimate transaction betweentwo people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extentthat it retains its humanity Therefore I urge people to write inthe first person: to use "I" and "me" and "we" and "us." Theyput up a fight

"Who am I to say what 7 think?" they ask "Or what / feel?"

"Who are you not to say what you think?" I tell them.

"There's only one you Nobody else thinks or feels in exactly thesame way."

"But nobody cares about my opinions," they say "It wouldmake me feel conspicuous."

"They'll care if you tell them something interesting," I say,

"and tell them in words that come naturally."

Nevertheless, getting writers to use "I" is seldom easy Theythink they must earn the right to reveal their emotions or theirthoughts Or that it's egotistical Or that it's undignified—a fearthat afflicts the academic world Hence the professorial use of

"one" ("One finds oneself not wholly in accord with Dr Maltby sview of the human condition"), or of the impersonal "it is" ("It is

to be hoped that Professor Felt's monograph will find the wideraudience it most assuredly deserves") I don't want to meet

"one"—he's a boring guy I want a professor with a passion for

his subject to tell me why it fascinates him.

22 ON WRITING WELL

I realize that there are vast regions of writing where "I" isn'tallowed Newspapers don't want "I" in their news stories; manymagazines don't want it in their articles; businesses and institu-tions don't want it in the reports they send so profusely into theAmerican home; colleges don't want "I" in their term papers ordissertations, and English teachers discourage any first-personpronoun except the literary "we" ("We see in Melville's symbolicuse of the white whale ") Many of those prohibitions arevalid Newspaper articles should consist of news, reportedobjectively I also sympathize with teachers who don't want togive students an easy escape into opinion—"I think Hamlet wasstupid"—before they have grappled with the discipline ofassessing a work on its merits and on external sources "I" can be

a self-indulgence and a cop-out

Still, we have become a society fearful of revealing who weare The institutions that seek our support by sending us theirbrochures sound remarkably alike, though surely all of them—hospitals, schools, libraries, museums, zoos—were founded andare still sustained by men and women with different dreams andvisions Where are these people? It's hard to glimpse themamong all the impersonal passive sentences that say "initiativeswere undertaken" and "priorities have been identified."

Even when "I" isn't permitted, it's still possible to convey asense of I-ness The political columnist James Reston didn't use

"I" in his columns; yet I had a good idea of what kind of person

he was, and I could say the same of many other essayists andreporters Good writers are visible just behind their words Ifyou aren't allowed to use "I," at least think "I" while you write,

or write the first draft in the first person and then take the "F'sout It will warm up your impersonal style

Style is tied to the psyche, and writing has deep cal roots The reasons why we express ourselves as we do, or fail

psychologi-to express ourselves because of "writer's block," are partlyburied in the subconscious mind There are as many kinds of

Style 23

writers block as there are kinds of writers, and I have no tion of trying to untangle them This is a short book, and myname isn't Sigmund Freud

inten-But I've also noticed a new reason for avoiding "I": cans are unwilling to go out on a limb A generation ago ourleaders told us where they stood and what they believed Todaythey perform strenuous verbal feats to escape that fate Watchthem wriggle through TV interviews without committing them-selves I remember President Ford assuring a group of visitingbusinessmen that his fiscal policies would work He said: "Wesee nothing but increasingly brighter clouds every month." Itook this to mean that the clouds were still fairly dark Ford'ssentence was just vague enough to say nothing and still sedatehis constituents

Ameri-Later administrations brought no relief Defense SecretaryCaspar Weinberger, assessing a Polish crisis in 1984, said:

"There's continuing ground for serious concern and the situationremains serious The longer it remains serious, the more groundthere is for serious concern." President Bush, questioned abouthis stand on assault rifles in 1989, said: "There are variousgroups that think you can ban certain kinds of guns I am not inthat mode I am in the mode of being deeply concerned."But my all-time champ is Elliot Richardson, who held fourmajor cabinet positions in the 1970s It's hard to know where tobegin picking from his trove of equivocal statements, but con-sider this one: "And yet, on balance, affirmative action has, Ithink, been a qualified success." A 13-word sentence with fivehedging words I give it first prize as the most wishy-washy sen-tence in modern public discourse, though a rival would be hisanalysis of how to ease boredom among assembly-line workers:

"And so, at last, I come to the one firm conviction that I tioned at the beginning: it is that the subject is too new for finaljudgments."

men-That's a firm conviction? Leaders who bob and weave like

24 ON WRITING WELL

aging boxers don't inspire confidence—or deserve it The samething is true of writers Sell yourself, and your subject will exertits own appeal Believe in your own identity and your own opin-ions Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.Use its energy to keep yourself going

of writing, put it in (It can always be taken out, but only you canput it in.) You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you

go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readerswho are worth writing for If you lose the dullards back in thedust, you don't want them anyway

This may seem to be a paradox Earlier I warned that thereader is an impatient bird, perched on the thin edge of distrac-

26 ON WRITING WELL

tion or sleep Now I'm saying you must write for yourself and not

be gnawed by worry over whether the reader is tagging along.I'm talking about two different issues One is craft, the other

is attitude The first is a question of mastering a precise skill.The second is a question of how you use that skill to expressyour personality

In terms of craft, there's no excuse for losing readers throughsloppy workmanship If they doze off in the middle of your arti-cle because you have been careless about a technical detail, thefault is yours But on the larger issue of whether the reader likesyou, or likes what you are saying or how you are saying it, oragrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humor oryour vision of life, don't give him a moment's worry You are whoyou are, he is who he is, and either you'll get along or you won't.Perhaps this still seems like a paradox How can you thinkcarefully about not losing the reader and still be carefree abouthis opinion? I assure you that they are separate processes.First, work hard to master the tools Simplify, prune andstrive for order Think of this as a mechanical act, and soon yoursentences will become cleaner The act will never become asmechanical as, say, shaving or shampooing—you will alwayshave to think about the various ways in which the tools can beused But at least your sentences will be grounded in solid prin-ciples, and your chances of losing the reader will be smaller.Think of the other as a creative act: the expressing of whoyou are Relax and say what you want to say And since style iswho you are, you only need to be true to yourself to find it grad-ually emerging from under the accumulated clutter and debris,growing more distinctive every day Perhaps the style won't

solidify for years as your style, your voice Just as it takes time to

find yourself as a person, it takes time to find yourself as astylist, and even then your style will change as you grow older.But whatever your age, be yourself when you write Manyold men still write with the zest they had in their twenties or