{"id":12884,"date":"2008-12-20T16:07:27","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T16:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2008\/12\/20\/more-zinsser-on-writing\/"},"modified":"2008-12-20T16:07:27","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T16:07:27","slug":"more-zinsser-on-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2008\/12\/20\/more-zinsser-on-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"More Zinsser on Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Zinsser, On Writing Well<\/strong>, 5th ed., Chapter 13:<\/p>\n

1. "Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around a passive verb." A good rule of thumb.<\/p>\n

2. "Passive-voice writers," Zinsser tells us, "prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words \u2014 which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous." (111) Here again we see that Zinsser has a hard time following his own advice. 'Glutinous' is from the Latin, glutinosus<\/em>, and means having the quality of glue. Why didn't Zinsser just write 'gummy'?<\/p>\n

My point is not that he should have written 'gummy,' but that he ought to reexamine his animus against words of Latin origin, an animus he shares with Orwell.  Brevity and Anglo-Saxonism are values, but there are competing values.<\/p>\n

3. "Most adverbs are unnecessary." Yes. "Most adjectives are also unnecessary." Ditto. I would have preferred the quantifier, 'many,' but let's not quibble.<\/p>\n

4. "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." (114) And while we are at it, prune 'out' from the sentence just quoted.<\/p>\n

5. ". . . let's retire the pompous 'arguably.' Unarguably we don't need it." (114)<\/p>\n

Here I must register my disapprobation. One man's pomposity is another's urbanity. I use 'arguably' to mean it is arguable that<\/em> or it can be plausibly argued that.<\/em> Employing this phrase, I signal my awareness that the issue in question is difficult and that intelligent people may well disagree. I indicate that I am a civilized fellow and not a rude dogmatist. Example: 'David Lewis' On the Plurality of Worlds <\/strong>is arguably the best work of analytic metaphysics to appear in English in the 1980s.' 'Arguably' softens an assertion in need of softening: there are no established criteria of good, better, best in philosophy. There is no call for dogmatism. But if I were engaged in polemic with a leftie, and needed to appear firm before an audience, then more bluntness and less urbanity would be in order.<\/p>\n

The same goes for 'register my disapprobation.' I could have written, ' Here I must disagree.' If I were an engineer writing a technical report, I would cut to the chase and elide the ornate. But I'm not. Why should I not make use of my vocabulary? Should dancers execute only the simplest steps? Ought all buildings be Bauhaus<\/a>? <\/p>\n

"Style," said Schopenhauer, "is the physiognomy of the mind." I would add that we don't all have the minds of simpletons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 5th ed., Chapter 13: 1. "Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around a passive verb." A good rule of thumb. 2. "Passive-voice writers," Zinsser tells us, "prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words \u2014 which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences … Continue reading “More Zinsser on Writing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}