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Less is more.

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Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.

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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.

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Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper....more

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Vulnerability has a strength of its own.

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One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

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I almost always urge people to write in the first person. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

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I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject.

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Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves.

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Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that y...more

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Beware, then, of the long word that's no better than the short word: "assistance" (help), "numerous" (many), "facilitate" (ease), "Individual" (man or...more

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Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the a...more

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Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like "surprisingly," ...more

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It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writ...more

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Good writing is good writing, whatever form it takes and whatever we call it.