Customer Reviews

On Writing Well 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

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This is a very useful book for a writer who pays attention to style. It follows in the steps of "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. It also devotes several chapters to writing about specific subjects, such as sports, arts, etc. I skipped these chapters since I have no interest in their subject matter. As to the recommendations related to style, I found most of them useful, but if you follow them too rigorously, you will end up with "Jack loves Jill. Jill loves Bob. Jack kills Bob. Lieutenant Colombo tricks Jack into confessing."

As noted by other reviewers, the book lacks a lot on instructions but deserves considerable merit for its illustrative content.

The book contains many excerpts from known and respected authors. While these examples are good and can put you in the 'write' frame of mind, I was expecting more, much more, in terms of intructionnal content and format,perhaps somethink like "Keys to Great Writing" by Stephen Wilbers.

For those of you who are looking for instructions per se, "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk and E.B. White; and "Keys to Great Writing" are much better choices,in my view.

I have always loved to write but more and more so since I've gotten older. Guess I've got more to say! I go in phases where reading is concerned - the phase I've been in for a long, long time is reading biographies and autobiographies. I've been actually very surprised when recently a few people I know complimented me on my writing skills and that just made me think I have to get educated. I have lead quite an interesting life (well I think so!) and would just LOVE to try and write about it. I did have the title.....for a long time! But after reading William Zinsser's book, especially as it's a guide to writing non-fiction, I have actually started....VERY slowly, but I am doing it and that's the main thing.

I found this book, for me as a "beginner" to be so enlightening and easy to read and to me, some ideas that were mentioned just made sense and I hadn't thought of them before. I found it an easy read and am actually reading it again at the present time. I know I have to study more and will look at some other books like this in the near future.

All budding writers, I highly recommend this book.