William Zinsser: Writing "On Writing Well" and keeping it up-to-date for 35 years

euroclydon · on March 25, 2009

This guy is awesome! I bought his audio book and "loaned" the MP3s to a friend. He has since begun re-writing many of his essays, AND has enrolled for a $3,000 summer course with Zinsser in NYC. If that's not a ringing anti-DRM endorsement, I don't know what is.

zaidf · on March 25, 2009

If you want to learn to cut the bullshit out of your writing and just make your point, read this book! And then read it again.

jamesbritt · on March 24, 2009

Very neat. I've just started reading that book.

Poleris · on March 25, 2009

Me too: just finished it yesterday. Almost feels like the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

eru · on March 25, 2009

Care to explain "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon"?

Poleris · on March 25, 2009

From Wikipedia: The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon occurs when a person, after having learned some (usually obscure) fact, word, phrase, or other item for the first time, encounters that item again, perhaps several times, shortly after having learned it.

In this case, after finishing the book I noticed several articles on news sites talking about the author. Perhaps this would be better categorized under the recency effect.

eru · on March 25, 2009

OK, thanks. In Germany the Baader-Meinhof name is firmly associated with terrorism. (And that's where the phenomen got its name from, too.)