On Writing Well: An informal guide to writing nonfiction

William Zinsser, “On Writing Well: An informal guide to writing nonfiction” Harper & Row, 1985 (third ed.), 238 pps  

This book, first published in 1976, grew out of a writing course that Zinsser taught for several years at Yale University.  I forget in which of my readings I ran across a recommendation to read it, but I’m pleasantly convinced it ranks along with Strunk & White’s, “The Elements of Style.”  

Anyway, I checked with my library and found this 3^rd edition from 1985; little did I know this book is now out in its 7^th edition, last published in 2006—such is life.  Oh—later investigation reveals my library-system has all the editions, not just the third; lesson learned.

Zinsser worked as a feature writer and film critic for the, now-gone, New York Herald Tribune; he wrote 18 books; taught nonfiction writing at Yale; worked as a senior editor at the Book-of-the-Month Club; and, moonlighted as a jazz pianist.  He is apparently still around at age 91.  I did not extract many notes from the book as they would be redundant to other notes I have previously extracted from similar books.

My Notes:

Pg. 124:  An excerpt from E.B. White is an example of excellent writing:

I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting.

Other examples of excellent writing are scattered throughout the book to illustrating excellent writing.