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Chapter 9
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On Writing Well, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Human Element
Simplicity vs. Clutter
Process and Organization
The Gift of Writing
Summary
Analysis
This chapter consists of advice that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Zinsser organizes it under a series of different headings. The first is Verbs. Writers should use active verbs instead of passive verbs whenever they can. “Joe saw him” is clearer, shorter, and stronger than “he was seen by Joe.” Like unnecessarily long words, the passive voice tires readers out and makes it unclear who’s doing what to whom. Active verbs push writing forward. Vivid verbs like “dazzle” and “swagger” invigorate it. Precise verbs like “resign” and “retire” make actions clearer than phrasal verbs like “step down.”
This chapter is Zinsser’s answer to The Elements of Style: his list of essential dos and don’ts for effective writing. Like Strunk and White, Zinsser doesn’t just impose rules on other writers. Rather, he explains why writers enrich their work by following certain rules. First, he argues that verbs are the lifeblood of the English language. By giving verbs the priority they deserve, the active voice simplifies and improves writing at the same time.
Active
Themes
Adverbs. They’re usually redundant. There’s no reason to say, “effortlessly easy” or “totally flabbergasted.” Writers should also avoid qualifying words like “decidedly,” “arguably,” “eminently,” and “virtually.”
Most of Zinsser’s rules are based on his basic principle: choose simplicity, not clutter. Redundant adverbs and vague qualifiers are classic examples of clutter because they add complexity without adding meaning.
Active
Themes
Adjectives. They’re also usually redundant. Adjectives should add something to the nouns they modify, not just emphasize something the reader already knows about the noun. For example, use “garish daffodils,” not “yellow daffodils.” By using fewer adjectives, writers make them more powerful.
Active
Themes
Little Qualifiers. Qualifiers like “a little,” “very,” and “in a sense” dilute prose. They make writers sound less confident, persuasive, and authoritative. Writers should eliminate them.
Active
Themes
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Punctuation. Writers should use more periods and break up long sentences into shorter ones. They should avoid exclamation points, which are a cheap and superficial way to add emphasis. The semicolon has fallen out of favor, and modern writers should only use it sparingly. In contrast, the dash is underrated—it helps writers incorporate explanatory details into a sentence. The colon is outdated, like the semicolon, but it’s still useful for lists.
Active
Themes
Mood Changes. Writers should use words like “yet,” “therefore,” and “subsequently” to show readers when they’re shifting direction. It’s acceptable to start sentences with “but.” “However” is a weaker substitute for “but,” but it sounds feeble at the beginning or end of sentences. Other words, like “yet” and “nevertheless,” do belong at the beginning of sentences. These short words are helpful because they replace long, unruly clauses to explain disagreement. Finally, writers should use words like “meanwhile,” “now,” and “later” to clarify changes in timeframe.
Active
Themes
Contractions. They make writing warmer and more readable. Writers should generally use them but avoid ambiguous contractions like “he’d” (he had, or he would?) and invented ones like “could’ve.”
Active
Themes
That and Which. “That” is almost always better than “which.” But after a comma, “which” is often necessary to explain the preceding phrase.
Active
Themes
Concept Nouns. Bad writers use abstract nouns where good writers use verbs. For instance, they write “the common reaction is incredulous laughter” instead of “most people just laugh with disbelief.” Don’t do this.
Active
Themes
Creeping Nounism. Bad writers use several nouns where good writers just need one. Say “rain” instead of “precipitation activity.”
Active
Themes
Overstatement. Excessive metaphors are tiresome and ineffective. Don’t say that “the living room looked as if an atomic bomb had gone off there.”
Active
Themes
Credibility. When writers lie or inflate the truth even once, they lose their credibility forever.
Active
Themes
Dictation. Businesspeople use dictation to save time, but they end up seeming pompous and imprecise on the page. They should at least edit what they dictate.
Active
Themes
Writing Is Not a Contest. Writers tend to compare themselves to more experienced or commercially successful peers, but this is pointless.
Active
Themes
The Subconscious Mind. Writing largely depends on the subconscious, which is always working. This is why writers often get new ideas when they wake up in the morning, and why old memories tend to resurface when they’re relevant to a new piece.
Active
Themes
The Quickest Fix. The best way to fix difficult sentences is often to just delete them. Unfortunately, writers usually spend lots of time trying to save them.
Active
Themes
Paragraphs. Shorter is better, especially in newspapers; short paragraphs make text more inviting and digestible. But sometimes, newsrooms take this too far and use too many one-sentence paragraphs, which distracts and condescends to the reader.
Active
Themes
Sexism. English is full of sexist language. Many words for women carry a demeaning tone (like “gal,” “poetess,” and “coed”). Don’t treat women as men’s possessions, like in the construction “settlers pushed west with their wives and children.” When possible, find neutral substitutes for gendered terms like “chairman,” but “chair” is better than the invented word “chairperson.” Most importantly, many writers wrongly use “he” as a generic pronoun. The plural “they” can often, but not always, substitute for “he.” Zinsser rejects “he or she” as too clunky, but suggests trying “we,” general nouns, or even “you,” depending on the context.
Active
Themes
Rewriting. It’s “the essence of writing well.” All first drafts can be improved, and professional writers are constantly rewriting. This doesn’t mean starting over from the beginning, but rather “reshaping and tightening and refining” the first draft. Zinsser gives an example of how he would do this with an ordinary paragraph. He notes that sentence-level mechanics are just as important as the logical construction of the piece as a whole. When writers approach their drafts from a reader’s perspective, they can easily see where their construction is shoddy or misleading. Zinsser admits that he’s learned to love rewriting because he feels like his writing is constantly improving.
Writing on a Computer. Computers are a gift to writers because they make it possible to rearrange, rewrite, and reword endlessly. Writing has never been easier than it is today.
Active
Themes
Trust Your Material. The truth is usually more interesting than the spin a writer puts on it. Some reporters start their stories with catchy snippets to get the reader’s attention, but they bury their story’s actual details. Zinsser thinks this is pointless: the real “color” in a story has to come out of its facts. When he wrote Spring Training, his book about baseball, he avoided berating the reader with metaphors and symbols. Instead, he interviewed people about their lives and found information interesting enough to capture his readers’ attention without unnecessary embellishment or commentary.
Active
Themes
Go with Your Interests. No subject is off-limits. Writers should follow their interests, no matter how quirky or specialized they are.
Active
Themes
