Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?
Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.
I think the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, try not to make it sound too good. Just use your own voice. Use your own style of putting it down.
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue... I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.
Plate glass... has no beauty of its own. Ideally, you ought not to be able to see it at all, but through it you can see all that is happening outside. That is the equivalent of writing that is plain and unadorned. Ideally, in reading such writing, you are not even aware that you are reading. Ideas and events seem merely to flow from the mind of the writer into that of the reader without any barrier between. I hope that is what is happening when you read this book
Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.
Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.
I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.
I've really tried to strip my writing of as many adjectives and adverbs as I possibly can.
Whatever simplicity I've achieved in writing, I think I owe most of it to Jean Renoir and Hemingway: simple, declarative sentences. I've read some very good writers, but the sentences were so long that I've forgotten what the point was.
High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.
Tell a story! Don't try to impress your reader with style or vocabulary or neatly turned phrases. Tell the story first!
I write in quite a simple way because that's just the way I write. The vocab I use is quite wee. That's just the way I talk.
Writing is better if it's kept simple. Every sentence doesn't need to have perfect noun/verb agreement. I've said 'ain't' on the air. Because I sometimes use 'ain't' when I'm talking.
Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.
And the writers are good in that it's easy to memorize, and good writing has an innate rhythm to it. And I've always felt that it's easier to get in your head than writing that has very kind of mind busting moments.
The shorter and the plainer the better.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.
It has often been said there’s so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads. That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is. And that's why your books have such power and strength. You publish with shorth! (Shorth is better than length.)
The idea of political content is irrelevant. Content is irrelevant. I always tell my students, "Never forget you're writing words! You know, word one, word two, word three, word four. The words have to be organized. Nothing else does."
