Clutter is the disease of American writing.
Interpretation
Clutter in writing obscures clarity and effectiveness. Good writing is concise and clear.
William Zinsser's quote underscores the importance of clarity in writing by suggesting that excessive clutter—be it unnecessary words, jargon, or convoluted sentence structures—detracts from the effectiveness of communication. Emphasizing simplicity and directness, Zinsser advocates for a writing style that engages the reader and conveys ideas with precision, which is essential for effective writing, especially in American literary traditions.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a writing workshop to emphasize good practices.
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso; they needed models. This is especially true of writing.
Good writing is lean and confident.
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
Reading is the unbelievably healthy way _x000D_ my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. _x000D_ Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to _x000D_ make contact with reality after a day of making things up.
The first eight years of schooling was with all white people. So that helped me to understand how white people think. I think that transition is what helped me bridge the gap, because that's what my success has really been about: bridging the gap between the black community and the white community.
Children have always brought a tremendous amount of joy to me and I feel that if you can catch them at a young age you can really change a life. There are a lot of studies that show that one act of kindness to these children has a 40% chance of making that child have a completely different outcome in their life. What you hope is that you can get a kid to believe in something and to believe in themselves.
This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated.
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
We should spend less time at universities filling our students' minds with content by lecturing at them, and more time igniting their creativity … by actually talking with them.
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