Brief summary of Zinsser's "On Writing Well"

I recently read through most of the 4th edition of William Zinsser's On Writing Well, published in 1990. I pushed it to the top of my reading list after reading Filip Hráček's article, "The engineering principles behind GIANT ROBOT GAME," which references Paul Boyd's, "The Cargo Cult of Good Code," which lists Zinsser's book as his second favorite book on software design. I enjoyed roughly the first half of Zinsser's book, I worked through another third or so, and then I figured I had gotten what I could from it. I agree with some of the criticism of his book that he uses a lot of words to tell you that you should not use so many words.

Near the end of my reading, though, he had a helpful recap of the fundamentals that he professes. These are, briefly:

• Clarity
• Simplicity
• Economy
• Humanity
• Active Verbs
• Avoid windy concept nouns

The last one merits explanation since "concept noun" is not a term one comes across regularly. An example from his book of a violation of the principle is the sentence, "The common reaction is incredulous laughter," which has no people in it. Compare that to, "Most people just laugh with disbelief," which is something that the reader can visualize. When I think about concept nouns, though, I tend to remember the wrong thing: Zinsser's caution against "creeping nounism" as one finds in the gem, "Communication facilitation skills development intervention."

Taken as a set, Zinsser's summarized points provide solid advice, though I am not sure it stands up against George Orwell's rules.

While I enjoyed most of the book, one part that irked me was how journalistic he treated the wide tent of "nonfiction writing." He argues for paragraphs to be constructed of three, two, or even one sentence. This strikes me as counter to the epistemic value of writing as embodied in the essay—the attempt to understand. That is the space where I do the most serious writing, and it is the space I want my undergraduates to inhabit. For a book-length treatment of writing advice, then, I think I'll stick with Strunk.