You’re never too old to write better.

It’s so simple and easy to write well, you won’t believe your eyes.

I liked two books on how to write well. The first book is ‘The Elements of Style’ by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. The authors presented the importance of down-to-earth and concise writing. This book appeals to me because I am weak at being concise in my writing while I love down-to-earth communications. This is the book that I needed.

I enjoyed this book because, as a business writer and a father of one, it does not speak to me like kids’ reading assignment. This book is great (especially for my aging eyesight) because it’s a short read with less than 100 pages including a content table,glossary pages. Did I forget to mention the big font sizes in the book? So this book is never too old for anyone aspiring to write well.

The other book is ‘On Writing Well’ by William Zinsser. On the same note as the first book (complementing the first book) and with practical advice for modern writers. Thus, I recommend you read both books.

The key points I find useful for writing well are:

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

• Avoid unnecessary auxiliaries or conditional — the benefit is more authority
• Use active over passive with brevity in sentence — the benefit is more vigor
• Try to use “will” instead of “would”, “can” instead of “could”
• Omit needless words
• Use active voice pp. 18
• Put statements in positive form pp. 19
• Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs pp. 71
• Do NOT overwrite pp. 72
• Do NOT overstate pp. 73
• Avoid the use of qualifiers pp. 73
• Do NOT explain too much pp. 75
• Do NOT inject opinion pp. 79

On Writing Well by William Zinsser

• Keep it simple (Chap 2)
• Write tighter, stronger, and with more precision (Chap 2)
• Cut clutter, cut unnecessary words — clutter is beating around the bush (Chap 3)
• Write in first person (Chap 4)
• Write for myself — I am the audience (Chap 5)
• Ensure unity of pronoun, unity of tense, and unity of mood (Chap 8)
• The most important sentence is the first. It’s the topic sentence / the subject. The first sentence cajole the reader with hard details that tell the reader why the piece was written and why ought to read it. But don’t dwell on the reason (Chap 9)
• Use active verb over passive verb i.e. “Joe saw him” over “He was seen by Joe” (Chap 10)
• Avoid adverbs because most adverbs are unnecessary i.e. “very”, “barely”, “deeply” (Chap 10)
• Use adjectives only if necessary to describe a subject; otherwise, not possible (Chap 10)
• Prune out the little qualifiers e.g. “a little”, “kind of”, “rather” (Chap 10)
• Mood changers are so important; refer to pp. 74 & 75 (Chap 10)
• Your style will be warmer and truer to your personality if you use contractions like “i’ll” and “won’t”. But don’t invent contractions, like “could’ve” because they cheapen your style (Chap 10)
• Always use “that” unless it makes your meaning ambiguous. If your sentence needs a comma to achieve its precise meaning, it probably need “which” (Chap 10)
• Avoid using concept nouns especially when they have no people in them and no working verbs — Readers can’t visualise anybody performing some activity.
• Do NOT overstate (Chap 10)
• Keep your paragraphs short. But not too short that it is a sentence or two long that becomes choppy for readers (Chap 10)
• Avoid sexism words i.e. chairman → chairperson, he → we, his → our, his → the, the writer → you* (*this is a godsend to anyone writing an instructional book or a self-help book) (Chap 10)
• Rewriting is the essence of writing well — writing is an evolving process, not a product
• The last word of a sentence leaves the reader in the punch
• Sentences must flow in a paragraph especially from the previous sentence (Chap 10)
• Readers will stop reading you if they think you are talking down to them. So write with respect for the English language at its best — and for readers at their best (Chap 20)
• Never hesitate to imitate another writer to learn and will eventually shed those skins to have our own voice and our own identity (Chap 20)
• Let each sentence contain one thought — and only one. Readers can process only one idea at a time, and they do it in linear sequence. Here is a good example by the author. “What struck me most powerfully when I got to Timbuktu was that the streets were of sand. I suddenly realised that sand is very different from dirt. Every town starts with dirt streets that eventually get paved as the inhabitants prosper and subdue their environment. But sand represents defeat. A city with streets of sand is a city at the edge.” Notice how simple those five sentences are: plain declarative sentences, not a comma in sight. (Chap 23)
• To state time or age of a subject, by writing “in our fifties…” is a serviceable drag. Instead find a proper name or a metaphor that will bring those dull but necessary facts to life e.g. “from the late middle age to Medicare.” (Chap 23)
• “In the morning my wife — a voice of reason at the edge of infinity — said she wouldn’t go into the Sahara unless we went in two vehicles. I was therefore glad to see two Land rovers awaiting us outside the hotel. One of them was having its front tire pumped up by a boy with a bicycle pump. Four of us squeezed into the back seat of one Land Rover; Mohammed Ali sat in front, next to the driver. The second Land Rover took our other two tour members and two boys who were described as “apprentices.” Nobody said what they were apprenticing for.”
  The author added a startling fact that needs no embellishments — the tire-pumping- and another small joke at the end. (Chap 23)
• An example of good writing: “For a business to remain in the same family on the same Manhattan block for more than a century is rare, and as a boy I couldn’t escape the naggings of continuity, for I was the fourth William Zinsser and the only son; my father’s fate was to have three daughters first. In those Dark Ages the idea that daughters could run a business as well as sons, or better, was still two decades off.” (Chap 24)