Highlights from Chapter 10 <<On Writing Well>> by William Zinsser
1. Verbs
1) Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.
2) Short is better than long.
3) Verbs are the most important of all your tools. They push the sentence forward and give it momentum. Active verbs push hard; passive verbs tug fitfully. Active verbs also enable us to visualize an activity because they require a pronoun, a noun, or a person to put them in motion.
4) Make active verbs activate your sentences, and avoid the kind that needs an appended preposition to complete their work. Use precise verbs.
2. Adverbs
1) Most adverbs are unnecessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning.
2) Don’t use adverbs unless they do necessary work.
3. Adjectives
1) Most adjectives are also unnecessary. Like adverbs, they are sprinkled into sentences by writers who don’t stop to think that the concept is already in the noun.
2) Again, the rule is simple: make your adjectives do work that needs to be done.
4. Little Qualifiers
Prune out the small words that qualify how you feel and how you think and what you saw: “a bit,” “a little,” “sort of,” “kind of,” “rather,” “quite,” “very,” “too,” “pretty much,” “in a sense” and dozens more. They dilute your style and your persuasiveness.
5. Punctuation
These are brief thoughts on punctuation, in no way intended as a primer. If you don’t know how to punctuate—and many college students still don’t—get a grammar book.
1) The Period
If you find yourself hopelessly mired in a long sentence, it’s probably because you’re trying to make the sentence do more than it can reasonably do—perhaps express two dissimilar thoughts.
2) The Exclamation Point
Don’t use it unless you must to achieve a certain effect.
3) The semicolon
The semicolon brings the reader, if not to a halt, at least to a pause. So use it with discretion.
4) The Dash
The dash is used in two ways.
One is to amplify or justify in the second part of the sentence a thought you stated in the first part.
The other use involves two dashes, which set apart a parenthetical thought within a longer sentence.
5) The Colon
But it still serves well its pure role of bringing your sentence to a brief halt before you plunge into, say, an itemized list.
6. Mood Changers
1) Learn to alert the reader as soon as possible to any change in mood from the previous sentence.
At least a dozen words will do this job for you: “but” “yet” “however” “nevertheless” “still” “instead” “thus” “therefore” “meanwhile” “now” “later” “today” “subsequently” and several more.
I can’t overstate how much easier it is for readers to process a sentence if you start with “but” when you’re shifting direction.
2) Don’t start a sentence with “however”—it hangs there like a wet dishrag. And don’t end with “however”—by that time it has lost its howeverness. Put it as early as you reasonably can. Its abruptness then becomes a virtue. “Yet” does almost the same job as “but,” though its meaning is closer to “nevertheless.”
3) Always make sure your readers are oriented. Always ask yourself where you left them in the previous sentence
7. That & Which
1) Anyone who tries to explain “that” and “which” in less than an hour is asking for trouble.
2) Always use “that” unless it makes your meaning ambiguous. In most situations, “that” is what you would naturally say and therefore what you should write.
3) If your sentence needs a comma to achieve its precise meaning, it probably needs “which.” “Which” serves a particular identifying function, different from “that.”
4) A high proportion of “which” usages narrowly describe, or identify, or locate, or explain, or otherwise qualify the phrase that preceded the comma.
8. Concept Nouns
The reader can’t visualize anybody performing some activity; all the meaning lies in impersonal nouns that embody a vague concept.
Don’t get caught holding a bag full of abstract nouns. You’ll sink to the bottom of the lake and never be seen again.
9. Paragraphs
Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual—it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read.
Each paragraph has its own integrity of content and structure.
10. Rewriting
1) Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost. That idea is hard to accept. We all have an emotional equity in our first draft; we can’t believe that it wasn’t born perfect.
2) The point is that clear writing is the result of a lot of tinkering. Many people assume that professional writers don’t need to rewrite; the words just fall into place. On the contrary, careful writers can’t stop fiddling.
3) Most rewriting consists of reshaping and tightening and refining the raw material you wrote on your first try.
Altering the sequence, tightening the flow, sharpening the point.
4) Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don’t like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity.
I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that won the game.
11. Trust your material
The reader plays a major role in the act of writing and must be given room to play it. Don’t annoy your readers by over-explaining—by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like “surprisingly,” “predictably” and “of course,” which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.
12. Go with your interests.
No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.