E. B. White Quotes

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

Whatever I'm doing, I try to write well. I try to give the reader a nice, clean well-written surface, where the writing is transparent. It probably takes me longer to write things, but it's very important to me that the writing itself be good.

Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.

The best style of writing, as well as the most forcible, is the plainest.

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

With great writing, there is great clarity.

Hard writing makes easy reading.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

Read every sentence you write out loud. If it sounds boring, kill it.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.

We should not write so that it is possible for [the reader] to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself.

Fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

When reviewers take the trouble to compliment a writer on her style, it is usually because she has made it easy for them to slide from one sentence to another like an otter down a slope.

You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.