Productivity
On Writing Well Summary & Review: Cut the Clutter
On Writing Well summary: William Zinsser’s rewrite clinic for nonfiction — cut clutter, hold unity, and keep going until the sentence can…
Read Summary →William Zinsser
"The editor who taught nonfiction to cut until one meaning remains."
William Zinsser (1922–2015) was an American writer, editor, and teacher. He began as a feature writer at the New York Herald Tribune, taught nonfiction at Yale, and wrote On Writing Well, the style guide that taught millions of people who write at work to cut clutter and finish the thought. The book has sold on the order of 1.5 million copies. He also wrote memoirs and books on jazz, baseball, and American places. The through-line is a human voice and a clean sentence.
1 book featured·On Writing Well·~1.5 million copies
Books by William Zinsser
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Key Ideas & Recurring Themes
Clutter is unfinished thought
Fat language hides that you are not yet sure. Cutting finishes the thinking.
Unity
One pronoun, one tense, one mood so the reader never meets a new speaker mid-piece.
The rewrite is the job
The first version is a lump. Reading aloud is how you find the second meaning.
Notable Quotes
"Clutter is the disease of American writing."— On Writing Well
Related Authors
Book Author William Zinsser
On Writing Well Summary & Review: Cut the Clutter
On Writing Well summary: William Zinsser’s rewrite clinic for nonfiction — cut clutter, hold unity, and keep going until the sentence can only mean one thing.