On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Essential Guide to Mastering Nonfiction Writing and Effective Communication
Last read July 27, 2021
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Highlights
62 highlights.
Nobody told all the new computer writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they’re writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well.
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On Writing Well is a craft book, and its principles haven’t changed since it was written 30 years ago.
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Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
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Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it’s not a question of gimmicks to “personalize” the author. It’s a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.
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But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
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How can the rest of us achieve such enviable freedom from clutter? The answer is to clear our heads of clutter. Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.
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Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.
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Take the adjective “personal,” as in “a personal friend of mine,” “his personal feeling” or “her personal physician.”
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Someone’s feeling is that person’s personal feeling—that’s what “his” means.
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Even before John Dean, people and businesses had stopped saying “now.” They were saying “currently” (“all our operators are currently assisting other customers”), or “at the present time,” or “presently” (which means “soon”).
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“Experiencing” is one of the worst clutterers.
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Clutter is political correctness gone amok.
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“political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. . . . Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
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Beware, then, of the long word that’s no better than the short word: “assistance” (help), “numerous” (many), “facilitate” (ease), “individual” (man or woman), “remainder” (rest), “initial” (first), “implement” (do), “sufficient” (enough), “attempt” (try), “referred to as” (called) and hundreds more. Beware of all the slippery new fad words: paradigm and parameter, prioritize and potentialize. They are all weeds that will smother what you write. Don’t dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don’t interface with anybody.
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Don’t inflate what needs no inflating: “with the possible exception of” (except), “due to the fact that” (because), “he totally lacked the ability to” (he couldn’t), “until such time as” (until), “for the purpose of” (for).
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Trying to add style is like adding a toupee. At first glance the formerly bald man looks young and even handsome. But at second glance—and with a toupee there’s always a second glance—he doesn’t look quite right.
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The problem is not that he doesn’t look well groomed; he does, and we can only admire the wigmaker’s skill. The point is that he doesn’t look like himself.
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Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.
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No rule, however, is harder to follow. It requires writers to do two things that by their metabolism are impossible. They must relax, and they must have confidence.
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Therefore I urge people to write in the first person: to use “I” and “me” and “we” and “us.” They put up a fight.
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Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.
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Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. If you’re not a person who says “indeed” or “moreover,” or who calls someone an individual (“he’s a fine individual”), please don’t write it.
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a mixture of cheap words, made-up words and clichés that have become so pervasive that a writer can hardly help using them. You must fight these phrases or you’ll sound like every hack.
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The race in writing is not to the swift but to the original.
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If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.
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Therefore such matters as rhythm and alliteration are vital to every sentence. A typical example—maybe not the best, but undeniably the nearest—is the preceding paragraph. Obviously I enjoyed making a certain arrangement of my ruffians and riffraff, my hooligans and hoodlums, and my readers enjoyed it too—far more than if I had provided a mere list.
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I don’t want to give somebody my input and get his feedback, though I’d be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. Good
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One choice is unity of pronoun. Are you going to write in the first person, as a participant, or in the third person, as an observer? Or even in the second person, that darling of sportswriters hung up on Hemingway?
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Unity of tense is another choice. Most people write mainly in the past tense (“I went up to Boston the other day”), but some people write agreeably in the present (“I’m sitting in the dining car of the Yankee Limited and we’re pulling into Boston”).
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Another choice is unity of mood. You might want to talk to the reader in the casual voice that The New Yorker has strenuously refined. Or you might want to approach the reader with a certain formality to describe a serious event or to present a set of important facts.
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Therefore ask yourself some basic questions before you start. For example: “In what capacity am I going to address the reader?” (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?) “What pronoun and tense am I going to use?” “What style?” (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?) “What attitude am I going to take toward the material?” (Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?)
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“How much do I want to cover?” “What one point do I want to make?”
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The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead.”
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Therefore your lead must capture the reader immediately and force him to keep reading.
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It must cajole him with freshness, or novelty, or paradox, or humor, or surprise, or with an unusual idea, or an interesting fact, or a question.
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Next the lead must do some real work. It must provide hard details that tell the reader why the piece was written and why he ought to read it. But don’t dwell on the reason. Coax the reader a little more; keep him inquisitive.
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Continue to build. Every paragraph should amplify the one that preceded it. Give more thought to adding solid detail and less to entertaining the reader. But take special care with the last sentence of each paragraph—it’s the crucial springboard to the next paragraph.
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narrative is the oldest and most compelling method of holding someone’s attention; everybody wants to be told a story. Always look for ways to convey your information in narrative form.
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The difference between an activeverb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.
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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.
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This is adjective-by-habit—a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.
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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.
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Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
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Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don’t diminish that belief. Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.
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construct your sentence so that the order of the words will put the emphasis where you want it. Also resist using an exclamation point to notify the reader that you are making a joke or being ironic.
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Humor is best achieved by understatement, and there’s nothing subtle about an exclamation point.
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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. “We decided to keep going—it was only 100 miles more and we could get there in time for dinner.” By its very shape the dash pushes the sentence ahead and explains why they decided to keep going. The other use involves two dashes, which set apart a parenthetical thought within a longer sentence. “She told me to get in the car—she had been after me all summer to have a haircut—and we drove silently into town.” An explanatory detail that might otherwise have required a separate sentence is neatly dispatched along the way.
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Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with “but.” If that’s what you learned, unlearn it—there’s no stronger word at the start.
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If you need relief from too many sentences beginning with “but,” switch to “however.” It is, however, a weaker word and needs careful placement. 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.
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Your style will be warmer and truer to your personality if you use contractions like “I’ll” and “won’t” and “can’t” when they fit comfortably into what you’re writing.
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only suggest avoiding one form—“I’d,” “he’d,” “we’d,” etc.—because “I’d” can mean both “I had” and “I would,” and readers can get well into a sentence before learning which meaning it is. Often it’s not the one they thought it was.
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Always use “that” unless it makes your meaning ambiguous. Notice that in carefully edited magazines, such as The New Yorker, “that” is by far the predominant usage. I mention this because it is still widely believed—a residue from school and college—that “which” is more correct, more acceptable, more literary. It’s not. In most situations, “that” is what you would naturally say and therefore what you should write.
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Credibility is just as fragile for a writer as for a President. Don’t inflate an incident to make it more outlandish than it actually was.
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Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it. Unfortunately, this solution is usually the last one that occurs to writers in a jam.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost.
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Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don’t like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite.
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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.
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seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.
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Don’t alter your voice to fit your subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that’s enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés.
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For writers and other creative artists, knowing what not to do is a major component of taste. Two jazz pianists may be equally proficient. The one with taste will put every note to useful work in telling his or her story; the one without taste will drench us in ripples and other unnecessary ornaments. Painters with taste will trust their eye to tell them what needs to be on the canvas and what doesn’t; a painter without taste will give us a landscape that’s too pretty, or too cluttered, or too gaudy—anyway, too something.
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Clichés are one of the things you should keep listening for when you rewrite and read your successive drafts aloud. Notice how incriminating they sound, convicting you of being satisfied to use the same old chestnuts instead of making an effort to replace them with fresh phrases of your own. Clichés are the enemy of taste.
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