Genealogy Books - On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary : The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (On Writing Well)

Back to On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary : The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (On Writing Well)

Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Zinsser's Digest is Easy to Swallow
Comment: In the Introduction's first paragraph of William Zinsser's instructive monologue, he sounds off our
quieted but conspicuously shared shame: "Fear of writing gets planted in most Americans at an early
age."

Zinsser commences his jovial lessons with a touch of satire on what we must do to keep our
audience, who he defines as "someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds." Then he limns:
"The person snoozing in a chair with a magazine or a book was given too much unnecessary trouble by
the writer."

Zinsser's manual on writing delivers an easy-going conversation in a warm voice,
which boosts the reader's confidence. His adroit discussion is easy to follow as he takes the reader
by the hand from one lesson to the next using a stripped-down writing style. His lessons are strong
and clear.

In this book, Zinsser may be the victim of his own success. As he focuses on science
and technical writing, business writing, sports, humor, and other forms of nonfiction writing, he
may have covered too much ground in this 320-page précis. However, with over a million copies sold
since its First Edition (published in 1976) the phrase "victim" is to be used loosely.

Enjoy
reading the well-written book and enjoy writing well!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Cassette not for me
Comment: I committed the unpardonable error of buying the abridged cassette. Not only was the narrative
boiled down to less than inadequate bare essentials, the tonal quality of the tape was horrid. Why
couldn't the entire book be recorded? Zinsser makes a few great points but I knew I had missed far
too much by taking a wretched shortcut Now I will have to purchase the book as well.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A writing book you won't be able to put down.
Comment: Another Outsource Marketing favorite!

We bought a copy of this book after reading an
article by its author, William Zinsser. The article was about an antique baseball board game, and it
was so fascinating, I typed Zinsser's name into Google to see if he could find other articles. I
learned that Zinsser was a former New York Herald Tribune editor and taught writing at Yale. And
that his book, On Writing Well, was in its seventh printing.

I ordered it immediately
and just about everyone at Outsource Marketing has read it more than once.

The amazing
thing is how much fun it was to read a book about writing. Zinsser supplies generous advice about
writing non-fiction in general, and in some of its specific forms (e.g., travel, sports,
technology). He makes these practical guidelines as interesting as antique board games (or, one
suspects, anything else he writes about). We can't really describe how he does it. We just wish we
could do it half as well.

Good marketing has to do with selection: of markets,
audiences, media, and images. At its core, though, is the selection of words that will make a
product understandable, interesting, and appealing. This is the best book we've read about how to
write that way.

--------------------------
UPDATE: October 12, 2006 />--------------------------

The 30th Anniversary Edition is now out. After five years
with this book, we've shared more copies of it than perhaps any other book in our library (it's a
toss-up between this and "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind"). This is the best ten bucks you
can spend on a book if you care about writing well.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great Read
Comment: I have read this book already, but every once in a while I pick it up for inspiration or just to nag
me about what I should be doing and how I should be doing it. I don't have an editor, and lord knows
the people I work with know less than I do about writing.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Good advice, but not boring!
Comment: Zinsser has accomplished in this book what very few of my teachers have ever accomplished in the
classroom: he gave good advice without being dull about it. After reading only the first few pages
of this book, I was hooked. I couldn't read fast enough to keep my brain satisfied. My parents
were kind of making fun of me as I read it because the title makes it sound "oh so interesting," but
I've got to admit, it really was! Zinsser uses a combination of humor and wisdom to prove his
points, and shows the differences between good and bad writing through real examples like books and
speeches (like my English teacher says, "SHOW DON'T TELL"). I definitely recommend this book to
college students and aspiring writers...once you get your grades back, you won't regret reading it!

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