85 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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created: 2025-12-04
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category:
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- "[[Books]]"
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- "[[Productivity]]"
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- "[[Learning]]"
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topic: Writing
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author:
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- "[[William Zinsser]]"
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cover:
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genre:
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pages:
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isbn:
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year: 1993
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rating:
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last:
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via:
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tags:
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- to-read
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---
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## Links
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![[Down.base]]
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# Part 1
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## 5. Crotchets and convictions
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2025-12-08T10:56
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Two types of writing
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- type a, explanatory
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- While you write think about what the reader is getting from what you've written. Does it make sense I have you said what you wanted to say? **What does the reader need to next**. Do the sentences follow each other. The had part is not in the writing, it's in the thinking.
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- type b, exploratory
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- is very different, there isn't the thinking and planning required with type A. Start to write and the road will revival it's self.
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Avoid noise in your writing. Redundancy, is noise. Misuse of words is noise. vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise. Clutter is noise: all those unnecessary adjectives (“ongoing progress”), all those unnecessary adverbs (“successfully avoided”), all those unnecessary prepositions draped onto verbs (“order up”), all those unnecessary phrases (“in a very real sense”). Information is your sacred product, and noise is its pollutant. Guard the message with your life.
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Brevity is important, keep it short. It's easier for the reader to understand, it a courtesy to the reader.
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Avoid jargon, speak plainly.
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### Killer nouns
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I can't say it any better as I don't quite understand it fully. Will need to go over it more to understand.
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>[!info] Quote
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>>I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
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>
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>That’s a wonderful sentence. The words are refreshingly short; they instantly appeal to the eye and make us want to read them.
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>
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>More important, all the nouns are working nouns: they denote objects (bread) or activities (race, battle) or attainments (riches, favor) or conditions of fate (time, chance) that we can relate to our own lives
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>
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>This is how Orwell said the passage would come out in the pompous bureaucratic language of our times:
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>
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>>Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
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>
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>That’s also a wonderful sentence. Please remember that sentence: it’s the enemy. Just at a glance it repels us—we don’t want to spend any time with a mind that expresses itself in such bloated words. What makes the words so ponderous is that they don’t have any people in them; they only have concepts—“consideration,” “conclusion,” “capacity,” “tendency.” Nouns that denote concepts are the death of vigorous writing. Good writing is specific and concrete.
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>
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This next one, I actually like the first one better. Sure the second is more emotive, but it somehow says less, the wisdom hidden behind a fog emotion. Maybe I'm just not good at this and better writers/readers think differently.
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>[!info] Quote
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>first version began like this:
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>
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>>Every generation inherits from the past a set of problems—and a dominant set of insights and perspectives by which the problems are to be understood and, hopefully, managed.
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>
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>For a manifesto, that’s well above the acceptable limit in concept nouns, generalized ideas and passive verbs, and someone told Hayden it wouldn’t do. Rewriting it on the spot, he got personal and specific and created a classic:
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>
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>>We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.
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### Active verbs
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>[!info] Quote
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>ACTIVE: I saw the boys skating on the pond.
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>PASSIVE: The boys were seen skating on the pond. [By whom? When? How often?]
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### Enjoyment
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>[!info] Quote
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>One of them asked him what it took to be a humor writer. “Comic writing,” he said, “needs audacity and exuberance and gaiety—and the most important of these is audacity.” Then he said: “The reader has to believe that the writer is feeling good.”
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# Part 2
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## Earth, Sea and Sky
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