On Writting Well by William Zinsser
- p 9: “If you find writing is hard , because it’s hard”
- p 12: “Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds”
- p 24: “You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience”
- p 35: “Readers hear what they are hearing”
- p 52: “Think small => decide what comes of your subject you’re going to bite off; be content to core, write it well
and then stop”
- p 55: readers want to know, what is in for them => write a good lead
- p 63: know when to stop an article
- p 64: “The perfect end should be for the readers slightly a surprise and yet seems exactly right.”
- p 65: the end should be remind to the begin
- p 73: mood => to change the mood before the start of the previous section
- p 73: stop using but and never start a sentence with ‘however’
- p 74: no using of I’d because it my stand for I would or I had
- p 79: “Just delete ugly looking sentences and don’t try to fix them because it’s often faster to rewrite them”
- p 83: “Rewriting is the essence of writing well”
- p 84: writing is an evolving process
- p 104: “How to write nonfiction”
- p 107: when you should use a tape recorder
- p 110: “Never let go anything out into the world that you don’t understand”
- p 128: “Distill the important from the immaterial”
- p 131: “Don’t use wax when you are describing sacred or meaningful places”
- p 134: tips for writing memoirs => write about yourself by all means with confidence and pleasure
- p 146: “Give yourself permission to write about yourself and have a good time doing it”
- p 147: “Writing is thinking on paper”
- p 148: describing how a process works is valuable for two reasons
- it forces you to make sure you know how it works
- take the readers through the same sequence of ideas and deductions that made the process clear to you
- p 156: “Always start with to much material. Then give your reader just enough”
- way of academic writing: question => answer (with this little form you can write well structured documents)