preview

Simplicity By William Zinsser

Decent Essays

William Zinsser is an American writer who wrote an informational guide to writing. He made a decision to revise a specific chapter called Simplicity. In the year 1980, the first version of Simplicity was created, then came 1998 followed up by 2006. In the first version, 1980, Zinsser created a long and wordy paper. He used specific examples but included details that were unnecessary. This is ironic because the paper is about how writers can write unnecessary words and phrases creating complicated sentences. He was not inclusive of gender, naming men as writers and only using wives as examples of distraction. This draft had a complete count of 20 paragraphs. The 1998 version had few changes when compared to the 1980’s version. There …show more content…

This statement was unnecessary because he already made an acceptable example. He did take out “pilot who wakes us” and “there’s a storm ahead it may get bumpy” in the 1998 version which appeared in paragraph 2, version 1980. These were unnecessary details that made sense for him to take out. He became more specific with word choice changing "weather" (paragraph 2-1980) to precipitation (paragraph 2-1998). (paragraph 8-1980) Zinsser included quotation marks and then in the 1998 version didn’t include them. In the 10th paragraph of each revised paper, he included devices that were relevant to that time period. The two paragraphs 13 and 14 from the 1980 version were combined into one paragraph on the 1998 version. He doesn’t take anything out of the paragraphs he just combines them. (Paragraph 14-1998) He takes out …show more content…

(Paragraph 2-2006) He changed viscous language to clotted language. This makes sense, he used a more commonly used word to this time period making it readable to a younger generation of readers and writers. (Paragraph 2-2006) He took out "-on Christmas Eve or any other eve-," this made sense because it was an extra unneeded detail. The sentence made complete sense just as “what father or mother can put together a child's toy from the instructions on the box?”. In paragraph 4 he changed what was originally “the president of a major university” in versions from 1980 and 98 to "the president of my university” in the 2006 version, making a personal connection with the reader. (Paragraph 8- 2006) He completely redid the paragraph. In the 1980 and 1994 version, the 8th paragraph was completely unneeded and included a story that seemed unrelated to the topic of writing. It started as “I love to be alone”. The 2006 version of this paragraph wasn’t completely off topic from the original. I still believe this paragraph isn’t needed, even with the shortening. With the 2006 version he has taken out the “he’s” and switched to “they”. This allows women to feel included, making it more likely for a female to enjoy the writing. It felt noninclusive in the first two versions. In the newest version (paragraph 10) he included devices relevant to that time period. Instead of saying “he,” he said a man or woman could be distracted by many forces

Get Access