On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Learn to eliminate excess verbiage, and continue learning the English language and other topics also.

There, I have saved you the price of this book. As others have pointed out, the writer is a coach or cheerleader and as such may be quite effective. However, I got the impression he was a bit of a hack himself, in a position for many years such that he was paid whether he wrote well or badly. I suspect those days are gone.

I lost most of my confidence in him gradually except when he began to enthuse about his "Webster's Dictionary" which I know as a generic term, i.e., nearly useless. There is no "Webster's" company, it has become a generic term for a large number of INFERIOR dictionaries. It is bad advice, and that is when I lost the big chunk of any remaining confidence in the value of his book.

Much of it would be useful, in lieu of any other instruction, for a high school student or college freshman. There are better books to recommend, however.

William Zinsser knows writing; his guide to help anyone become a better writer is both engaging and informative. If you want to write better; to convey your message clearly and concisely, you'll want to read this book.

Zinsser's best advice to the writer: Economize the verbage, Shakespear. Cut to the chase; state your case and get out of the way. The purpose of writing is to convey a message in the fewest words possible. This eliminates confusion and keeps the reader's attention from wandering.

It's especially good advice for those memo writers in the world of corporate America. I spent many years wading through memos that never seemed to say anything although they seemed to last forever; the syntax was downright sinful. The thought process was often mysterious; it was almost impossible to tell if the writer was happy with something or unhappy. Usually, these people somehow were bosses.

Zinsser's wonderful book will inform you and entertain you. Now that's something to write home about.

I usually only write reviews for books I can praise. I actively avoid giving criticism about books that have, as this one does, a large and enthusiastic following. I feel compelled to write now because I think that many will not be as well served as they imagine after reading these reviews.

I think this book is popular for many understandable and, in themselves, good reasons. The writer is up-beat and optimistic. He supplies simple formulas for complex problems. He has both wit and charm. He supplies many funny stories. He makes fun of pompous academics and pedagogues. He is empathetic and warm. His instructions are personal, not distant or abstract. He requires little of the reader and avoids pesky formalities. For all these reasons, one should be attracted to a non-fictional book of reminiscence about writing. However, all these virtues are not those of a book teaching writing.

Indeed, many dislike books that try to teach writing because the majority are rigorous, boring, and impersonal. So, it is no wonder that against those demanding and dry texts this humane presentation appears as an oasis. However, it is a mistake to think that those emotional values make this a good writing text.

This book's relation with writing is much like a movie's relation with its topic: a narrative about a thing more than an instruction. For instance, "Field of Dreams" may make us happy, but it hardly is likely to make us better baseball players. Here most of Zinsser's time is expended in context, quotation of others, and folksy tale. These are topped off with a brief commands - "Go to it" - that have a cheerleader's enthusiasm and lack of content. He celebrates one style, his own, which is short and informal to the exclusion of the hundreds of others that have graced our language. He gives little help with formal discourse. He feels free to judge -- for instance scientists -- outside his field and beside the point. He makes numerous grammatical errors and seems to recognize the dash as the only punctuation. He generalizes egregiously about topics that are enormous and yet undefined, for instance "the human element."
In short, he is less an instructor and more a coach.

As I said, his many strengths have understandably broad appeal, but this book would be inadequate for the college classes I teach. You may not need such formal help and that is fine as long as you do not think it appears here.

Even though i have been writing professionally for many years, this book has helped me to be an even better writer. WIth his simple, to the point suggestions, my writing is becoming more simple and to the point and probably more pleasing for readers. I would recommend this book to anyone at any stage of their writing career.

This is simply the best writing book I've ever read. Really helped me to understand that more is not better, and the power of getting to the point. Timeless, this book has made a huge improvement in my ability to communicate.