On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction

In this fifth edition of On Writing Well William Zinsser has further refined and updated a classic that has sold more than 700,000 copies since it was published in l976 - one of America's continuing best-sellers. Based on a course that Zinsser taught at Yale and on his long experience as a free-lance writer, editor and teacher, the book has been praised by thousands of writers, journalists, teachers, students and grateful users as the best book on nonfiction writing they have ever read - even more useful and helpful than Strunk and White's The Element of Style. Considerably reorganized, this edition has many new sections - especially in the chapters on interviewing, travel, memoir, science, sports and humor - and new examples of good writing by women and by writers from other cultural traditions. Throughout, outdated passages and references have been eliminated or replaced. The book also examines certain new trends in nonfiction writing that have arisen since the previous edition, such as the fabrication and manipulation of quotes and the self-aggrandizement of sportswriters at the expense of the sport. While retaining all the strong qualities of earlier editions, the fifth edition of On Writing Well focuses with new sharpness on the needs of writers in the mid-1990s.