[muhfuhkuh]

He was the oracle of sound writing practice. I studied the example page[1] from his book with his hand-written edits like it was ancient cuneiform. Always the consummate perfectionist in the professional sense of the word, Zinsser was part of the reason I was a technical writer for nearly 15 of my professional years.

1. http://i.imgur.com/UGWP4vi.jpg

[userbinator]

...and on the other side, a linguistics professor is a bit more critical about his advice:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18345

(I expect there will be a post on that site about Zinsser's death too.)

[kimmel]

I read the language log pretty regularly and they tend to have quality content. Then you got a post like this which says the book is bad and everything about it is bad after skimming it in a book store. An entire review based on skimming and a few out of context quotes does not make a well researched and thought out position on a book. At no point does the author say they actually read the book cover to cover. This is just a rant against being prescriptive in your writing since it is not "the one true way".

I have read On Writing Well and there is a lot of material covered in this book. I recommend the chapters on editing as that was Zinsser's day job.

[tarheeljason]

That example affirms the power of "show, don't tell." Those pages, in the raw, assure the novice or insecure writer that even experts revise and resubmit.

RIP, Zissner.

[tarheeljason]

Zinsser* - my apologies.