William Knowlton Zinsser (1922–2015) was an American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher. He is celebrated for his book On Writing Well (1976,) which emphasizes that good writing results from hard work, not innate “talent.”
Born in Manhattan, New York City, Zinsser served in the U.S. Army in North Africa and Italy and graduated from Princeton. He began his career as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune, where he worked as a feature writer, drama editor, film critic, and editorial writer. He was a longtime contributor to leading magazines, taught writing at Yale and Columbia, and was executive editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
Zinsser’s book On Writing Well (1976) sold more than 1.5 million copies by employing his literary craftsmanship to urge clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity. Later revisions included manuals on writing with the word processor and tweaking writing to audiences of diverse cultural backgrounds. Zinsser also wrote Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (1998) and Writing to Learn: How to Write—and Think—Clearly About Any Subject at All (2013.)
Zinsser’s autobiographies are Writing About Your Life: A Journey Into the Past (2004,) Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacher (2010,) and The Writer Who Stayed (2012.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Zinsser
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.
—William Zinsser
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
—William Zinsser
Topics: Simplicity, Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing
Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
—William Zinsser
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing
Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
—William Zinsser
Topics: Thinking
If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.
—William Zinsser
Topics: Writing
Writing is thinking on paper.
—William Zinsser
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers
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