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“ ”Probably no subject is too hard if people take the trouble to think and write and read clearly. Maybe, in fact, it’s time to redefine the “three R’s” — they should be reading, ’riting and reasoning. Together they add up to learning. It’s by writing about a subject we’re trying to learn that we reason our way to what it means. Reasoning is a lost skill of the children of the TV generation, with their famously short attention span. Writing can help them get it back.
About William Zinsser
William Knowlton Zinsser (born October 7, 1922 – May 12, 2015 ) was an American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher. He began his career as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune, where he worked as a feature writer, drama editor, film critic, and editorial writer, and has been a longtime contributor to leading magazines.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Shorter versions of this quote
Reasoning is a lost skill of the children of the TV generation, with their famously short attention span. Writing can help them get it back.
Additional quotes by William Zinsser
As a writer you must keep a tight rein on your subjective self — the traveler touched by new sights and sounds and smells — and keep an objective eye on the reader.
Don't start a sentence with “however” — it hangs there like a wet dishrag. And don't end with “however” — by that time it has lost its howeverness.
I’ve singled out the humanities and the sciences because they are regarded as natural opposites, even natural enemies. But this is oversimplifying to make a point. Between English at one end of the spectrum and chemistry at the other are many subjects, like economics, that are a mystery to both camps.