William Zinnser's "Simplicity"

The quote that I chose was, “Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other,” this was said by William Zinnser. I got this quote from the article in the packet called, William Zinnser’s “Simplicity.” The URL is http://www.wowessays.com/dbase/ac2/awo210.shtml.

I chose this quote because when I thought about it, I was able to relate to it. William Zinnser talks about how many people talk and write extravagantly even though to him, it isn’t necessary to do. He says that a lot of people think that writing “simply” is a not a good thing, but writing with a wider vocabulary and phrases in more of a detailed way is better. Instead of being like other writers, William believes that people should write in a more “simplistic” way. To him, having a more complicated sentence isn’t necessarily always a good thing.

This quote is important to me because it says how you don’t always have to write and say things in complex ways for people to think that it is good. Sometimes even the simplest phrases can be very good because everyone can understand what you are trying to say. Zinnser thinks that too often people talk in a certain way that is hard to understand, it’s just a bunch of important sounding words that sound somewhat good together. I agree with this statement because there are many times when I am reading things such as articles or books that I can’t really comprehend what they wrote. Also, because people try to write in a more complex way, they tend to write things that make sense to them, but seem like gibberish to the people that are actually reading it. William thought that bigger was not always better, he wanted people to be able to understand his writing easily without putting a lot of effort into it. Even though reading a passage with tons of big words in it makes the author sound smart, I agree with William because sometimes they best way to say something is to make it sweet, simple, and to the point.

To me, simplicity is the act of being simple. To be simple, you don’t need to have expensive things to live a happy and fun life. Also, when you are being simple or have a simple life, you are easy to understand. There wouldn’t be a part of you life that would make people have to think more about you for them to understand you. Just like life, William Zinnser thinks that writing simplistic is good and easy to understand.