

William Zinsser, Author of “On Writing Well”, Dies at 92 - lispython
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/arts/william-zinsser-author-of-on-writing-well-dies-at-92.html

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muhfuhkuh
He was the oracle of sound writing practice. I studied the example page[1]
from his book with his hand-written edits like it was ancient cuneiform.
Always the consummate perfectionist in the professional sense of the word,
Zinsser was part of the reason I was a technical writer for nearly 15 of my
professional years.

1\. [http://i.imgur.com/UGWP4vi.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/UGWP4vi.jpg)

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userbinator
...and on the other side, a linguistics professor is a bit more critical about
his advice:

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18345](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18345)

(I expect there will be a post on that site about Zinsser's death too.)

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kimmel
I read the language log pretty regularly and they tend to have quality
content. Then you got a post like this which says the book is bad and
everything about it is bad after skimming it in a book store. An entire review
based on skimming and a few out of context quotes does not make a well
researched and thought out position on a book. At no point does the author say
they actually read the book cover to cover. This is just a rant against being
prescriptive in your writing since it is not "the one true way".

I have read On Writing Well and there is a lot of material covered in this
book. I recommend the chapters on editing as that was Zinsser's day job.

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SixSigma
On Writing Well is available online.

[https://archive.org/details/OnWritingWell](https://archive.org/details/OnWritingWell)

It helped me go from low 70s to high 80s at Uni.

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dragop
Given the subject, would it be amiss to point out that the title as written
here is missing a comma?

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dragop
Now corrected.

